


Buckler

by SecretEnigma



Series: Nox-verse [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Action/Adventure, Again It's Ardyn, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, And By Noctis I Mean Nox, Angst with a Happy Ending, Axis Wants To Know When He Became the Braincell, Brotherly Bonding, But Gains a New One Along the Way, Don't Worry It's Fine, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Galahdian Culture (Final Fantasy XV), Gen, Good Ardyn Izunia, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, It's Ardyn, Minor Blood and Gore, Nox Accidentally Makes a New Friend, Nox Misses His Brothers, Protective Noctis Lucis Caelum, Tags Are Hard, Temporary Character Death, Uncle Ardyn Izunia, Welp That's Confusing, don't worry he's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27379111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma
Summary: Axis Arra has never wanted anything to do with his father's heritage. He is Galahdian, he is an Arra, and being a refugee and teenage father means he has more than enough things to worry about without adding his unwanted illegitimate heritage the mix.Except he's not the unknown (and unwanted) child of just any Lucian noble line, and when he finds a lone, half-starved Lucis Caelum in the wilderness, he finds he cannot look the other way.(Aka a look at how Axis Arra becomes Nox's Shield through Axis's perspective, from their first meeting to the day Nox is found by Regis)
Relationships: Ardyn Izunia & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Axis Arra & Luche Lazarus, Axis Arra & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Axis Arra & Tredd Furia, Axis Arra/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Nox-verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556734
Comments: 73
Kudos: 377





	Buckler

**Author's Note:**

> *Aggressively yeets this onto Ao3* Over 23k words and I FINALLY FINISHED IT. Whoo boy.
> 
> Side note if you haven't read the one-shot called Nox, then go read that first or you will be very confused. Also 90% of canon involving the Kingsglaive characters and what little (read: nothing) canon Galahdian culture we know of (save for their love of spicy food) has left the chat, do not expect to find it here. I have somewhere around 80 pages of headcanons for this AU on my tumblr at this point I think there's NO STOPPING ME NOW.

When Axis was ten years old, his mother took him to the shoreline of Galahd, sat him down on one of the big rocks there, and told him that the reason he didn’t have a father when the other children did was because his father lived somewhere else. His father was a Lucian that his mother had met in a bar while winding her way back to Galahd on her Great Journey. They’d had a night together that produced Axis and, because she loved and adored her son, she had never told Axis’s father that he existed. If his father had known, she told him, Axis would have been taken away and forced to live outside the isles, off in the too-big city known as Insomnia, where the Lucian kings ruled from afar and where the land had been beaten into submission beneath buildings and roads, leaving none of the wild spaces or secret things behind those walls.

That was no place for a Galahdian child to grow up in his mother’s opinion, so she’d never contacted Axis’s father about him. Axis’s father was now married to someone else, and that was just fine by Axis’s mother.

Axis took the news … probably better than most. He had always been a thoughtful child who preferred to examine things rather than throw a tantrum, and he’d already suspected that his father was either dead or a stranger on the continent —he’d heard enough stories about other children like him in the past, listened to enough rumors among the fishwives—. So while it was still a shock to have such news delivered so bluntly, Axis didn’t cry or get mad. He just mulled that over for a long time and then asked his mother who his father was, that she was so convinced he could take an Arra from their rightful Homeland and Clan.

Cassandra Arra had given him a proud look for asking such a smart question, then answered it as bluntly as she answered everything. His father was Clarus Amicitia, Shield of the Lucian King. Clan Arra might be a strong clan for its size, might have numerous allies and alliances with Clans Lazarus and Furia, but even they wouldn’t have been able to deny the Shield of Lucis. Still wouldn’t be able to deny him if he ever found out.

Axis had nodded and internalized the lesson Cassandra had given with that information. No one but his most trusted could know who his father was. Not unless he wanted to be discovered and taken away.

Years later, Axis wondered if that day was the reason he’d become such a quiet, reticent person. True, he’d never been as loud as his cousins or friends from the other clans, but that was different from choosing to go days without speaking, to restrict his words to either the shortest of sentences or the most sarcastic ones that had people wishing he’d stayed silent.

Not that it mattered. Tredd, a wild and brash young Furia around his age, had decided that Axis was his best friend and Tredd did more than enough talking for the both of them.

He got them into more than enough trouble too, something that amused Tredd’s cousin, Porrima, to no end. Axis liked Porrima’s laugh a lot, and he was about fourteen when he realized that Porrima, two years his elder and a lot friendlier by nature than he ever was, had a very pretty smile that could turn his bronze skin dark without fail. She was also one of the bravest people he knew, becoming a blooded Huntress at age fourteen despite the heavy prosthetic leg she’d been forced to wear since she lost her right leg up to the knee as a child.

Sixteen years old and Axis suddenly found himself caught in the middle of a mild kerfuffle between the Arra and the Furia. Not a physical one, they’d been allies too long to resort to that so easily. But Cassandra had incurred a debt from Porrima’s parents and debts were serious matters in Galahd. Cassandra didn’t want extra land or livestock though, and Porrima’s parents had no spare weapons to give her but the ones they used for their own hunting and defense. Anything less than those was too small to repay the debt, and Cassandra’s constant refusal to take land away from a family of six who needed it more than she and Axis was causing tensions to slowly rise.

Porrima solved it one day by limping up to Axis in the middle of the village square where everyone could see and offering him a marriage bead and bracelet. If she married Axis, then the debt would have to be considered repaid, because Cassandra would have gained both a daughter for herself and a wife for her son. The fact that Axis himself was getting a free chance to marry the girl of his dreams was really just a bonus.

He accepted the bead and bracelet with a rare grin that made Tredd whoop. The matter was settled by the next day and Porrima moved into Axis’s and Cassandra’s home, with plans for Axis to build them a new one in the grove of trees out back.

Axis never got a chance to build it.

Two months into being married, Niflheim finally arrived in their stretch of the jungle, burning and shooting everything that moved. Axis, Porrima, Tredd, and around half the village managed to flee into the jungle.

Only a dozen of them survived the week long journey to the boats that would take them away from their burning homeland and to foreign shores.

Axis’s mother and Porrima’s closest family were not among that number.

Grieving, lost on a continent of strangers with strange customs, robbed of the majority of their families and clans, Axis and what few remained of their village had banded together long enough to see their children and less abled members to shelter before scattering desperately across Lucis in search of employment that would keep them all alive. Most went to Insomnia to take shelter in the refugee sector the king had opened for them, to join the Kingsglaive the king had created a few years earlier that offered good, steady pay and a chance to fight back against the Empire. It was a good offer, no matter how bitterly it sat on the tongue —to be used and taken advantage of like that, to be forced into a soulless concrete city so unlike their jungle homes—.

Axis didn’t take it. Couldn’t **risk** it, because Insomnia was the home of his blood father, and if something happened, if somehow being in Insomnia and joining the Kingsglaive with Tredd and the other refugees he’d come to know —Libertus, Nyx, Crowe, Pelna, all from differing villages, all bonded as battle siblings by grief and tragedy and the smoke in their nostrils as Galahd _burned-burned-burned_ — led to him being discovered… He didn’t know what would happen. He didn’t know what he would do. He wasn’t an adult by Lucian standards, his marriage to Porrima might not even count as **legal** on this messed up continent. What if his father insisted he stay in Insomnia forever? What if the King’s Shield tried to separate him from his wife, now at the most critical time when he had to pull off entire strings of Hunts just to ensure he had enough money for food and shelter and doctors —horrid, cold people, nothing like the midwives Axis would rather have gone to—?

He couldn’t risk it. He **couldn’t**. So instead he took Porrima and _ran-ran-ran_ until they eventually stopped running in an out of the way, glorified rock tunnel that somehow had a small town inside. Meldacio Hunter HQ it was called. A haven for several Hunter families who were astonishingly quick to accept any Galahdian refugees who wandered in looking for work or a safe place for their loved ones. It was near the Vesperpool, an area that was vaguely but not really like Galahd, just enough to make Axis feel both homesick and soothed, and Porrima needed somewhere to stay. Somewhere safe where she could rest for the next however many months —years, because traveling with an infant would be horrible and **why** had Galahd fallen right after Porrima had found out she was pregnant? It was cruel—.

So they stayed. Axis signed up for a Hunter’s license and the elderly Matron who ran the Hunters was kind enough to let Porrima stay in her house until Axis could scrape together enough money to buy a small, rundown home on the edge of the HQ and make it livable. He travelled all over Lucis, taking strings of Hunts to raise as much money as he could, alternately cursing being away from Porrima and watching the ever-increasing Niflheim presence with vengeful eyes —he wanted to hunt **them** instead, wanted to fight and kill and bleed them even if it killed him in return but couldn’t because Porrima and their unborn children needed him and that **burned** —.

Tredd helped. He always sent part of his pay to supporting his last remaining cousin at the beginning of every month. Tried to talk Axis into joining the Kingsglaive whenever they met up —“the pay is a lot steadier than a Hunter’s bounties, and you’d get to help me tear those Nifs apart!”—, dragged Axis off to the glaive-favored bars when they both had a moment in order to introduce him to the others —to try to sway him to come join when they told stories of fighting the Empire that had taken everything using magic untold—. Axis always refused, lost himself out in the wilderness for weeks on end before rushing back to Meldacio to check on Porrima as her pregnancy progressed —he was going to be a father, he wasn’t **ready** to be a father, he was only sixteen and now he had no clan to teach him how to raise his children until he was ready to take over the process on his own—.

Seventeen years old and Axis was a lot of things. An illegitimate child of the King’s Shield, a refugee in a land that, for the most part, didn’t welcome the “jungle barbarians” on their soil, a husband …

A father. A father of **triplets**. Two beautiful, precious baby girls and a loud, already energetic baby boy.

It hurt. It hurt to not be able to fight the people who had taken his rightful home —his **children’s** rightful home— from him. It burned that he had to scrape an existence out on Hunts and odd jobs because he was too afraid of his own blood to dare become a soldier with a steady pay and a chance to destroy the monsters that would have gladly murdered his wife and children out there in the jungle if they’d gotten the chance.

Years later, Axis was never certain if that anger would have gone anywhere. If he would have caved to the steadier pay and ability to fight and joined the Kingsglaive. If his anger at the Empire and his fear of being discovered would have turned into bitterness toward the Lucian royal line itself for not doing more against the enemy, not taking better care of the people who were **supposed** to be as much a part of the Lucian kingdom as those of Leide or Cleigne or Insomnia. He was never certain if his anger would have stayed or if it would have mutated. He never had to find out.

Because Nox Astral-d*mned Izunia happened.

Axis was eighteen years old when he first saw the bundle of chaos, magic, snark, and idiotic insanity that was Nox Izunia. He’d been on another chain of Hunts, already tired and aggravated from tracking down several marks and still having three more to go before nightfall when he’d dared to take a shortcut past an Imperial base. As long as he stayed a certain distance away, the mindless MT units wouldn’t care about him and as long as he was fast the few mecha pilots that might be around wouldn’t deem him worth using as target practice —hopefully, Axis still had scars from getting too close to a base while chasing down a mark—. He was just passing by when the alarms went off. He’d dropped behind a boulder in case it was him that had somehow set it off, peered over the top of the rock and **stared** as the entire base went crazy.

MT units on patrol turned and ran back inside, he could hear mecha units whirring to life and rockets being fired as the alarms wailed-wailed-wailed-. Cut off with a stutter as what looked like a lightning storm went off inside the walls of the base.

In the middle of a clear, cloudless afternoon.

Seconds after that, Axis heard the thump of an explosion and saw smoke rise, heard the resulting daisy-chain of explosions as **something** set fire to the base’s munitions warehouses one after the other. More screaming and chaos that Axis could hear even from his hiding place, the wails of MTs as they broke and the thud-boom of mecha units exploding as lightning erupted again and again from within the compound walls, often followed or accented by leaping, forty foot high tongues of flame. At one point, one of the thick walls of the base crumbled away under the force of the explosions, leaving a gaping hole big enough to drive two trucks through what had once been an heavily fortified enclosure.

Axis waited until the chaos began to wind down before slinking cautiously toward the road so he could see the gate. If it was a glaive attack —and it had to be surely, that had looked like magic going off, though why they were doing it on a clear sunny afternoon rather than in the early morning was a mystery— then he wanted to be there to check on the survivors who came out. Offer to guide them on the shortest route to the nearest Haven if they needed it.

Instead of a contingent of Kingsglaive —or even Crownsguard—, the only figure to emerge from the devastated Nif base was an underweight, shaggy-haired, tired-eyed thirteen year old **kid** , exiting the burned out gates of a Niflheim base like he was about to walk home from a party rather than sauntering out of the Imperial stronghold that Axis had just seen go up in fire and lightning and screaming. He was sweaty and tired looking, covered in smudges of soot and his black hair almost grey from ash, stinking of ozone and burning oil from fifty yards away. His clothes were about three sizes too big at the least, like they had been bought with the kid’s future twenty year old self in mind rather than the limping, teenage twig he currently was. He looked like he’d just been through … well … whatever it was that had happened in that base.

More than that, judging by his exhausted but smug expression and the bloody kukri dangling from his hands, the kid looked like he had **caused** it. Which was … impossible. Surely impossible. This was a lone kid and he didn’t look like someone who had lost the rest of his battle party. He was just a kid, he shouldn’t have even **been** in a battle party to begin with —he knew that Lucians were crazy, but even they had standards on child soldiers, only Cor the Immortal had been recruited so young and that had been back during the Liar King’s reign—.

The boy spotted him staring, stilled and … aged somehow. Just in his eyes, his blue gaze turning sharp and **old** in a way that made Axis feel breathless and small. There was something timeless in the boy’s gaze, something **knowing** and deadly, like he could peel Axis open and see all his secrets, all his failures and struggles, and judge whether those made him wanting. Pressure swelled in the air, nameless and heavy as the ozone of a storm, settling on the back of his tongue like being too close to the Kingsglaive when Tredd invited him to watch their practice —too close to Nyx, who had taken to flinging herself off things and warping to safety far too readily for poor Libertus’s heart—. A realization settled in Axis’s bones, unshakable and certain, setting his blood on fire and stealing his breath in a way he had never known was possible.

This boy was a Lucis Caelum. This boy was an unknown child of kings just as Axis was an unknown son of Shields. This boy was a Lucis Caelum like Axis was an Amicitia. This boy was a **king** without the kingdom in the same way Axis was a Shield without a monarch to stand beside and guard with his life.

And the boy knew all of those things too.

Magic brushed up against his core, poking and twining through his soul in _judgement-confusion-recognition-curiosity_ , as massive and powerful as the oceans and as unyielding as the cliffs of Galahd. Fear gripped his throat in a vise as Axis realized that this boy could **own** him if he wanted. Could reach out and chain Axis’s soul to his side through his Amicitia blood and Axis wouldn’t be able to **help** but follow him, obey him, guard him even if his Galadhian blood and sensibilities screamed denial.

The Amicitia line had been Shields for centuries upon centuries. Loyalty to Lucis Caelums was as imprinted into their blood as magic was imprinted in their kings. This boy that Axis had never even seen before could **take** Axis’s loyalty without Axis’s consent and no one would be able to free him from that slavery, not even himself —and was this what becoming a Kingsglaive felt like? This feeling of something curling around his soul and weighing whether it was worth claiming without any consent on his part? How did Tredd and Luche stand it?—.

Then, as suddenly as it had risen and curled around him, the ocean of magic retreated. Slipped away like mist on the shorelines in the cold morning, leaving Axis … untouched. Unchained. Unclaimed. Axis was still **free** , in his heart and soul and mind, free and unmarked by magic that could have forced him to bend the knee. He blinked, gulped air and tried to keep his knees from giving out as the boy nervously glanced away from him, suddenly utterly unassuming. As quickly as the boy’s eerie, too-old gaze and too-large magic had risen, it was gone and all Axis could see was a scraggly barely-teen covered in soot and dressed in too-large clothes.

“Hello,” the boy called across the distance between them, oddly shy and skittish for someone who could have crushed Axis’s mind and soul on a whim if he wanted, “I … don’t suppose you could forget you saw me?”

Self-preservation said to agree. That he wanted no part of this boy’s life, no matter how temporary. It also pointed out that disagreeing might get him killed on the spot. This was an unclaimed Lucis Caelum after all, the more people alive who knew that, the greater the risk to him.

But Axis was a stubborn teenager. A stubborn teenager who had also been a father for about five months, a brother and protector figure for many Galahdian children in both Insomnia’s refugee sector and other niches and slums throughout Lucis. He was a stubborn, overprotective Arra just like his mother had been and he was also —grudgingly, unwillingly— an Amicitia. So instead of agreeing and letting the boy walk away, Axis dared to stride closer, one hand hooked on his belt as he blurted, “A little hard to do that after the light show. You did all that,” he gestured to the smoking base behind the boy, “by yourself?”

The boy blinked at him, as if confused by his approach and conversation, then glanced over his shoulder at the base behind him before shrugging, “…Yes?”

Axis wasn’t sure if he was pleased that the kid hadn’t lied to him or if he was aggravated that the boy had just … admitted to it. How had no one found this wayward Lucis Caelum before? Was he usually a better liar and just didn’t see the point right now? Axis pinched the bridge of his nose, “Maybe next time don’t make your light show so flashy if you don’t want to attract attention.”

The boy raised a hand to rub his neck, paused halfway there because of the kukri still in his hands, lowered his hand again, “To be fair, usually my only witnesses are the Imperials and I kill all of them.” He glanced around, as if expecting more Hunters to pop out of the brush. When they didn’t, he shuffled a bit and then turned as if to leave, “Bye then.”

Axis gaped. This … this thirteen year old **kid** —yes, he knew that was only five years younger than Axis but he was a husband and father now so it didn’t count— was just going to walk away? Knowing that someone knew his secret and could go off and tell anyone in earshot that there was an unclaimed Lucis Caelum running around causing trouble? He took half a step after the boy, then broke into a sprint when the kid fell over bonelessly for no seeming reason. Axis managed to catch the boy in time to keep him from cracking his head open on the dirt, noted the too-light weight of the frame in his arms —just like the other Galahdian refugees _don’t-think-about-that_ — even as he began searching for injuries.

The boy clumsily tried to swat his hands away, mumbled embarrassed protests and insisted he was fine as Axis lifted the too-large shirt up just a little and — _saw so many scars_ ** _too many scars_** — the sluggishly bleeding wound on his side. It wasn’t that deep or dangerous by itself, but considering Axis could count each of the kid’s ribs and he probably hadn’t eaten in who knew how long-. Axis hissed a soft curse and yanked his bandages out of his pack, bullied the boy into letting him wrap the injury and then helped him get away from the scene of the base’s total destruction —the boy kept insisting he was alright, but Axis wasn’t buying it, blood loss was dangerous enough even when **not** coupled with starvation—.

Ignoring the fact the kid could flatten him with his magic at any time, Axis dragged the boy off to the nearest Haven, pushed him into a seated position on the rock, and then began building a fire. Normally he wouldn’t dare, not this close to a Nif base, but he doubted there was anyone left to hunt him down right now and walking to town and a restaurant would take too long —not to mention he had no gil to spare and doubted the boy had any at all—. The protests faded away as Axis moodily began slapping together ingredients for an easy meal in his banged up cooking pan and Axis glanced up to make sure the kid hadn’t passed out.

Blue eyes stared back at him with eerie intensity and Axis could almost feel kings of ages past weighing his worth in that gaze. He grunted and looked back at what he was cooking to hide the chill that went up his spine —he wondered if all Lucis Caelums were like that, too old for their skin and with gazes too deep to fathom—. Axis forced himself not to cringe or bow under that gaze —he was not a coward, and he was not a Shield. He was an Arra, a Galahdian, a blooded Hunter of the Watchful Path—, “When was the last time you ate?”

The silence eased somehow to something less inhuman and more surprised, “…I don’t … actually know. What day is it? I think it’s been about … three? Four maybe?”

Axis stilled, shifted on his heels and **stared** , “You haven’t eaten in three to four days.”

The boy shrugged, like it was no big deal, “Got distracted.”

“You. Blew up that Nif base. With your magic. Something that is **very physically exhausting and demanding and dangerous**. After not having eaten for at least **three days**.”

The boy at least at the decency to hunch his shoulders as he muttered sullenly, “It’s fine. I’ve done it before.”

It was only the fact that Axis had a wife and children who would probably starve to death if he got himself stabbed by a wayward —crazy— Lucis Caelum that kept Axis from reaching over and **smacking** the boy upside the head. By all the Astrals was **this** why Lucis Caelum’s all needed Shields? Not to keep them safe from outside threats but because they were all suicidally bad at self-care? Did being born with untold magic remove their self-preservation abilities or something? Or had Axis just met the **one** Lucis Caelum in history that was **this stupid**?

Axis took a long breath to rein in his urge to smack the Lucis Caelum and shake sense into him, said through gritted teeth, “You. Are a crazy idiot.”

The brat had the gall to look **amused** , “So I’ve been told.”

Oh good, at least Axis wasn’t the only one aware of this kid’s insanity. Axis turned back to his pan and stirred the food with more aggression than necessary. Silence lingered awkwardly between them before the boy broke it with a random, “Nox.”

Axis looked up again, glared in confusion. The boy fidgeted with his too-big clothes and stared at the horizon instead of Axis as if suddenly shy, “My name. It’s Nox.”

Axis could guess why Nox didn’t bother saying a last name, considering his mother’s surname would have no claim compared to the magic in his veins —he wondered if Nox even knew his mother’s surname, he wouldn’t be surprised if Lucians abandoned unwanted children in dumpsters like they did pets—, “…Axis Arra.”

“Nice to meet you,” Nox said with far too much sincerity for Axis’s nerves. Axis sensed movement and steel, looked up sharply in time to see Nox set his kukri in his lap and pull cleaning supplies out of seeming thin air —the famed armiger then—. Nox glanced back up at him, tilted his head and asked in a far too gentle voice, “Is it alright with you if I clean these?”

If the boy had been planning to kill him, he would have done it already —or worse, chained Axis’s soul to his side with a thought—, so Axis just grunted and turned back to his cooking. The silence lingered semi-comfortably between them, Axis cooking and Nox cleaning his kukri while Axis mentally brooded over his many questions and Nox … well. Who knew what was going on in his mind. When the food was finished, Axis scraped it onto a pair of camp plates and shifted to hold one out to Nox, “Here, this is-.” He stopped. Stared at the shining blades of the kukri Nox was polishing.

Those blades were familiar. Too familiar. He’d thought they were just Lucian knock-offs while they were dirty, but looking at the careful work of the steel and hilts —battle-worn as both were—, the coeurl teeth dangling from one of them-.

Those were Galahdian Chieftain blades. **Ulric** Chieftain blades. Or at least, one of them was, the other had clearly been modeled more on Insomnia and the Lucis line than Galahd’s legends and blessings. Still. Chieftain blades. In the hands of a boy without braids or last name. How had Nox gotten his hands on them? Did he know what they **meant**?

Would he even care if he did?

The blades vanished in a flare of crystalline magic, and Nox stared at him with that inhuman level of age and solemnity, “Is there a problem?”

Axis bit back the accusations and questions he wanted to air —not his place, yet, and besides he didn’t want Nox to decide Axis was better off dead than running around able to spill his secrets—, “Nothing. Those were fine craftsmanship.”

Nox was still looking at him too sharply for comfort as he responded slowly, “I know. They’ve survived a lot.”

Axis knew a warning to back off when he heard it, and chose to offer the plate of food rather than lose his life or freedom, “This is yours. I don’t have a pot for soup, but this should still be easy on your stomach.”

Nox blinked down at the plate and just like that, the inhuman edge to his gaze was gone —this kid was going to give him emotional whiplash, honestly—, “Thanks. You didn’t have to.”

As Nox took the plate and utensils and eagerly sampled the food —but ate slowly, like he already knew how badly a deprived stomach reacted to sudden food—, Axis settled crosslegged and huffed, “Consider it thanks for busting up that Nif base. It’s been an eyesore for a long time now.” Just like all signs of Niflheim rule were.

After they had eaten the food, Axis somehow found himself talking Nox into staying on the Haven for the rest of the evening and night, to help heal his wound if nothing else —the realization that the kid wanted to wander off from a Haven and into the daemon-filled night did **not** give Axis much confidence in the boy’s survival instincts—. The fact that Axis was giving up his schedule and the three marks he needed to complete as soon as possible was pushed to the back of his mind. Porrima would never approve of him letting a thirteen year old wander off into the wilds while injured and so underweight —so scarred, and Axis shuddered to think how he’d gotten those scars, he’d only seen a little bit of Nox’s torso but there had been so many and they didn’t look **unintentional** —. He’d just have to pick up the slack tomorrow or something.

Axis settled down into a light sleep, ready to snap awake the moment he heard trouble from either Nox or the surrounding area, and promised himself that this was the furthest extent of his involvement with anything Lucis Caelum. He wasn’t a Shield, and he couldn’t afford to get distracted. He would bully the kid to the nearest town, maybe drop Dave a call about finding another stray that needed adult Hunter guidance, and then **leave** and never have to see or think about illegitimate royalty again.

He really, **really** should have known better than to tempt the Astrals like that.

Rather than let himself get bullied to the nearest town, Nox insisted on trailing after him on Axis’s remaining Hunts, tore apart the hapless wildlife with a speed and skill that made Axis want to gape, then cheerfully tried to insist Axis could keep all of the rewards rather than split it evenly. After forcing gil on the kid, Axis dropped a call to Dave —who **sighed** the moment he heard Nox’s name, apparently he’d met the boy before— and Axis left. Intent on not getting attached to the wayward Lucis Caelum.

He ran into Nox a week later in the middle of the boy destroying a Nif patrol. Then three days after that blowing up another base. He then went a suspiciously quiet two weeks without any sign of blue eyes and too-large clothes before Nox reappeared, blowing up the base Axis was passing by —again—.

It seemed like no matter where on Lucis Axis went, his chances of running into Nox kept getting higher, and every time he did, Axis found himself getting more and more involved.

It started with dragging him off to Havens to check for injuries. Then he let Nox come along on Hunts. Then he found himself caught up in one of Nox’s fights with a Nif patrol and realized in between the heady rush of terror and satisfaction over finally fighting back against the Empire that Nox had a blindspot the **size of his back**. He would not guard his back. It was like he wasn’t even aware that enemies would attack him from behind-.

Or like he instinctively assumed someone would cover it for him.

_Lucis Caelum’s always have a Shield._ Axis realized with a chill when he confronted Nox about his blindspot and saw Nox halfway say, “But Gla-,” and then go very still, quiet and empty-eyed with grief in a way Axis **knew** in his own soul. _Lucis Caelum’s always have a Shield._

_Except Nox. Not anymore._

And something in Axis keened, sharp and deep and grieving at the thought of Nox, this headstrong kid with a chip on his shoulder the size of an empire and no notion of self care, losing what might have been his only friend and definitely his only backup. At the thought of Nox running headlong into fights without anyone to watch his back, but a part of him still expecting someone to **be there** for him. And somehow that was enough of a realization to make Axis join in more often, if only so that Nox wouldn’t get himself killed with a blindspot that big —a blindspot almost perfectly person-shaped, to the extent Axis could almost feel the shape of it, feel how it belonged to someone taller and more broad-shouldered than he, could find the edges where Nox’s awareness ended and the blindspot began like a box that was too roomy for someone Axis’s size—.

He was attached to the kid, Axis realized about three months in. Well and truly attached to the wayward Lucis Caelum that cared far too little about himself, who was covered in scars and not entirely right in the head —sometimes the kid would just- not talk, would lie on the Haven staring at the sky with vacant eyes like he was dying from a broken heart— but was so very protective and kind and cared too much about others when he was the one in trouble half the time. Inwardly Axis swore, because he hadn’t wanted to get attached to Nox, he’d wanted nothing to do with Nox or his own Shield blood. And yet…

And yet. Here he was, attached and worried, but also feeling more alive than he had since Galahd’s fall because with Nox, Axis could fight against the Empire. With Nox, Axis didn’t feel **useless** but also didn’t have to sell his soul to the Lucian king.

He told Porrima about Nox, four months after he probably should have. Told her everything he knew and had observed, everything he thought and how he felt, how he had been helping Nox to take out Imperial patrols and bases even though he had no magic and **knew** it was a risk to Porrima and the kids if he died. He told her about Nox’s scars, his blind spot the size of a person —a Shield— and how Axis was … not filling that spot, but could operate in it, how Nox **trusted** him to operate there in that blindspot.

Porrima had just smiled sadly, kissed the corner of Axis’s mouth, and murmured that she’d thought he’d found someone out there. That he should bring Nox home with him sometime so that she could meet him. That … maybe Axis should braid him.

Axis considered that for a long time. Debated what to say or do next time he found Nox, how to invite him over to meet his family —and when, in just a few short months, had he grown to trust Nox enough to know the secret of his children?—.

Except it turned out that Axis wasn’t the only one with a secret to introduce.

Axis took one look at the man beside Nox the next time they met up and lunged for the throat. The man had the gall to laugh in amusement as he sidestepped Axis’s lunge. Nox threw himself in the way and Axis growled, “Nox, that’s **Niflheim’s Chancellor**!”

Nox gave Axis a look of long-suffering, “I know. But it’s not like he wanted the position.” Axis growled and tried to step around Nox, paused when Nox put a hand on Axis’s chest to hold him back, “Look, will you stop trying to murder my uncle? Please? It’s not what you think.”

What.

“That man,” Axis pointed at the tackily dressed enemy politician. “That man is your uncle.”

“Yes.”

“By blood.”

Nox blinked, “Yes? Is there any other kind?”

Axis took one deep breath, then another, then a third for good measure, and snarled, “The king. Has terrible taste in women.”

Nox scowled, “ **Hey**.”

The Chancellor who was also Nox’s uncle raised an eyebrow and drawled, “I’ll have you know my sibling was **quite** the eye-catcher, thank you.”

Axis couldn’t believe this was happening. That this conversation was happening. What in the world was **wrong** with his life-, “It’s not about how she **looked** , she was related to **you**. You’re the **enemy**!”

The man’s face sobered, “Not entirely by choice, I assure you.”

“Why should I believe **anything** you say?”

Ardyn Izunia tilted his head toward Nox, but didn’t take his eyes off Axis, “Because Nox is of my blood. He is my **family** , and I will choose him and his over the Empire any day.”

Axis wavered, disbelieving, glared at Nox when the boy cautiously touched his shoulder, “It’s true. How do you think I always know the weak points in the imperial bases? Where do you think I go when we aren’t hanging out? I’m with him, blowing up **other** stuff using his intel.” Axis stared, glanced at Ardyn then glared at Nox in question. Nox nodded, something sad and fragile in his eyes, “I swear it, Axis. He’s not your enemy. **I’m** not your enemy. He’s my uncle and … and we hate that he’s the Chancellor, he never wanted the position in the first place but… things were complicated a few years ago and…” Nox winced, seemed at a loss for words.

The Chancellor in question finished softly, “It was safer to give in and take the position than to say no and face the consequences. It’s an empty title anyway, meant only to keep me as a prize to flaunt. But as the Chancellor, no one questions my movements … or the secrecy around my nephew and his personal life.” _No one questions why my nephew is never seen, no one gets to know he has magic._ Axis leaned back, considered the two of them.

Cursed venomously as he realized he couldn’t fault the story or fully doubt the sincerity in the Chancellor’s blue eyes, “I hate you,” he spat at Ardyn, saw Nox flinch and tried to bury his guilt in his anger even as he added, “but I won’t touch you. You belong to Nox and he doesn’t deserve to lose more family. Not even **you**.”

Ardyn smiled, grim but honest and pulled his hat farther down to shade his eyes, “I suppose that is the most I can expect. Thank you.”

Axis didn’t invite Nox home that time, or the three times after when Ardyn showed up at each one, gleefully helping in destroying Niflheim property, always somehow holding the right weapon for whatever job he needed to fill in their awkward, tense little group. It took until the fifth or so time they met for Axis to come to a few conclusions. First was that Ardyn as just as much, if not more, of a disaster human as Nox. Neither remembered to eat, neither were good at maintaining a sleep schedule, neither had an ounce of self preservation between them —clearly, Nox had inherited most of his issues from his mother’s side—. Second was that, for all he was the enemy Chancellor, Ardyn was … a decent man. A broken one, a mental mess of one, but he was awkward and clever and … oddly kind —Ardyn didn’t seem to notice danger to himself, but he noticed it around Nox and Axis, always checked them both for injuries after a fight, always **fussed** over Axis in a cautious way, like he expected to be snapped at for caring—.

Axis didn’t know how to handle that realization. That he … enjoyed Ardyn’s company to an extent. The dry snark shared between Nox and Ardyn, the easy relationship between nephew and uncle that somehow had enough room for Axis there, watching Nox’s back when Ardyn couldn’t —when there was no Shield like Nox **still** expected there to be—. Ardyn was nothing like what Axis expected from an enemy, and the vicious satisfaction when they tore down another base or slaughtered another soulless patrol of MT units was as genuine as the laughter Nox dragged from his uncle with his bad jokes and sarcasm. Maybe it was an act to draw him in, but Axis had met a lot of Mainlanders since the Burning, many of them liars and many others just apathetic to his cause, and none had seemed as oddly sincere as Ardyn. Ardyn had an even larger chip on his shoulder against the Empire than Nox, for reasons Axis couldn’t fathom, and seemed happy to indulge in the company of anyone his nephew found worthy of attention.

And then, maybe two months after first meeting the Chancellor, Axis learned **why** Ardyn had such a large chip on his shoulder for the Empire he worked for.

Axis had gotten separated from Nox and Ardyn in the fight, a newly set up base that still wasn’t finished and so had plenty of weaknesses to exploit. He had come out of it with nothing more than a few scrapes and gone looking for Nox-.

Only to stumble across the horrifying sight of Nox dragging his uncle clear of a pile of broken MTs, an axe buried to the haft in the man’s chest, blood pooling everywhere, already darkening with age despite not yet looking tacky. There was no way Nox’s uncle was still alive. Not with a wound like that, not when he was that **still** -. Axis had hurried forward, heart in his shoes for Nox’s sake, a prayer of rest and safe passage to the afterlife already on his tongue as Nox began working the axe loose from his uncle’s body, cursing up a storm the entire time, “-irresponsible, reckless, **harebrained son of a lemming** -.” The axe came free with an awful noise that made Axis internally shudder.

Axis would admit to a garbled squawk of horror when the **dead body** Nox had just pulled an axe out of rasped back, “You’re running out of insults, Nephew Mine, those weren’t even curses.”

Nox flung the axe away, not startled in the slightest by his uncle’s dead body talking, and crouched down to cradle the body close to his chest in a rough sitting position “I’ve been cursing for ten minutes because **someone** decided to take an axe to the chest-.”

“It was **hardly** intentional-,”

“So it’s either run out of good ones or switch to another language. Now shut up and let me see how bad the damage is **this** time.”

The body- Ardyn —who was **alive** somehow— rasped a wet laugh that turned into a shaky vomiting session, Nox obligingly tilting Ardyn onto his side so that the blood hit the pavement and not clothing. Axis stopped, hovered several yards away, watching in fascinated horror as, through the shredded remains of Ardyn’s many layers of clothing, he could see sinew finish forming and skin stitching back together in a flare of red-gold sparks. _Nox’s magic is blue,_ whispered a voice in Axis’s head, _not red. Not gold. That magic is_ ** _Ardyn’s_** _._ As if to prove his point, Ardyn waved away Nox’s fluttering with a final sputtering cough, let the teen help him to his feet and then summoned a tall scythe in a flash of red crystal fragments that were definitely not from Nox —the glaive had all gotten blue magic, just like their king, the only way it was another color was if it was from another person— and leaned heavily on it like it was a staff.

_Ardyn has magic. The Chancellor of Niflheim has magic-_ and … those were a **lot** of scars. Far more scars than Axis had ever seen on a living being, far more than even the ones he’d glimpsed on Nox. All of them looked fatal save for what looked like a blue-tinted brand on his chest as Ardyn leaned heavily on the scythe and let Nox pull off the shredded remains of his uncle’s shirts, revealing even more fatal scars. _The magic of kings without being given it, torture scars, apparently unable to_ ** _die_** _…_

Axis breathed out slowly and felt the last shreds of bitterness toward Ardyn turn to smoke in the wind. _Safer to accept the title than the consequences indeed._ Axis inhaled, still unnoticed by the nephew-uncle pair who were bickering more intensely than usual, but not so much the situation did not appear outside the norm for them in some twisted way. As if Ardyn taking a fatal blow and then getting up from it once the killing weapon was removed was perfectly ordinary. For them, maybe it was. Axis wondered with a sick twist of his stomach if Nox getting up from fatal blows was normal too, or if it was just a quirk of Ardyn’s red-gold magic that Nox didn’t have. He decided he never wanted to have to find out.

_I need a drink._ But he couldn’t have one right now. He couldn’t run away screaming either. These two idiots needed him, both because Ardyn was still visibly shaky from his “death” and because … they just did. They needed him as their anchor, to make sure they ate and slept and didn’t get too reckless —he’d been separated from them for **ten minutes** and look what happened—. If he panicked now, showed hysteria or revulsion or any other reaction like those, he didn’t doubt that the two would vanish from his life like shadows at noon. Perhaps a few months ago he would have preferred that, but now the thought made him want to snarl.

So instead of demanding answers, or cursing, or laughing hysterically from panic, Axis squared his shoulders and stomped forward, “You’re an idiot,” he growled. Both Nox and Ardyn startled badly, looked at him with wide, fearful eyes like they expected a rejection or an attack. Axis just pulled a potion out of his pocket and tossed it to Nox, then held out the other to Ardyn, “Just because you can take a hit and walk away doesn’t mean you **should**. It’s called dodging, moron. Try it sometime.”

Ardyn stared down at the potion in Axis’s hand like it was some great mystery, then shared a long look with Nox, who was still holding his in a bloody hand. Nox licked his lips and spoke for them both, “You … you aren’t scared?”

_I feel like throwing up, but not because of what he can do, creepy as it is,_ Axis didn’t say. He pushed the potion into Ardyn’s hands to hide the shake of his fingers and grunted, “What’s to be scared of? An idiot hobo chancellor who can’t dodge?”

Ardyn sputtered slightly at the “hobo” bit, but Nox pressed, “You aren’t even … **surprised**?”

Axis resisted the urge to say the first thing that came to mind about how he wanted to go get blackout drunk and forget he ever saw that. Instead, what came out of his mouth was a flat, “Mom always said the spiteful ones never die.”

Despite the circumstances, it was gratifying to hear the two of them start laughing, for all Ardyn’s still sounded harsh and raspy, like a man just dragged out of the river.

They camped on the nearest Haven for the night, and Axis cooked dinner without comment while Nox fussed over his uncle and the redhead just sighed and complained about losing his shirts. He listened to them bicker, watched the way their shoulders slowly relaxed the longer Axis went without recoiling from them or acting afraid, and came to a decision. It was a reckless one, a stupid one even but … but it felt like the right one. He hadn’t asked about what happened, or how Ardyn had magic, but he knew what he’d seen and so did they. He now knew not just one, but three of their greatest secrets —that Nox was a Lucis Caelum, that **Ardyn** was a Lucis Caelum, that Ardyn couldn’t **die** —.

In the morning, before they could wander off into the wilderness again, Axis invited —ordered— them to come with him to Meldacio HQ. The two exchanged nervous glances before obediently following him on the trek up to the Vesperpool area.

If his wife was surprised when Axis turned up a week later with not just Nox in tow, but Niflheim’s **Chancellor** , she didn’t show it. She just smiled and welcomed them into their tiny house with a gesture and a promise of dinner soon. Nox’s eyes were wide as they shuffled in and Axis had known Ardyn long enough to spot the nervous edge in his sweeping bow.

Both of them went totally still when they spotted the playpen taking up most of the living room floor, filled with ratty stuffed toys that Axis had either purchased from Outposts or had been gifted by members of his, Tredd’s, and Luche’s Clans. Inside the playpen, Axis’s triplets —his treasures, his children, his greatest and most precious secrets— babbled eagerly at Axis, waving their hands and crawling around —they were learning to walk, but so far they still preferred to crawl according to his wife—. His last visit hadn’t been that long ago, and they remembered him —the fact that he **had** been gone for long enough stretches when they were smaller that he’d been a stranger to them would always hurt—. Venia, his smallest and boldest, spotted Nox and Ardyn and babbled at them, one or two actual words jumbled up with simple noise as she fearlessly crawled up to the edge of the playpen and pulled herself up to look at them. Axis reached in and picked her up, kissing her forehead and tickling her stomach with a hand to hear her laugh before turning to watch Nox’s and Ardyn’s reactions.

Nox was still staring at Historia and Spiritus in the playpen, a bright-eyed look on his face and a shiver of power in the air that felt protective. He looked at them like any of Axis’s remaining clan did, or how Tredd and Luche had first looked at them. Awe and protectiveness and already blooming adoration. Axis glanced at Ardyn.

Ardyn was staring at Venia, and the look on his face took Axis’s breath away. There was pure, open adoration there, wonder and a bright-edged **fear** , like just being near her would be enough to break her. Venia spotted Ardyn staring, dressed in all his clashing layers and colors, and giggled at him. She had never been afraid of strangers, and she didn’t hesitate to flail her hands in his direction, babbling with all the energy of a healthy eleven month old. Ardyn flinched faintly away, even though her hands were nowhere near him, his own hands curling shyly inside his long sleeves like he was terrified of touching her.

Something in Axis’s heart broke a little.

No one as unexpectedly kind as Ardyn should fear being near a child.

“Her name is Venia,” Axis murmured, “that’s her sister Historia, and her brother Spiritus.”

“They’re so little.” Nox cooed as he crouched just outside the playpen, watching the two babies who stared back with far less fearless curiosity than their sister had —but not outright fear, Axis wondered if they too could feel Nox’s magic swelling around the room, rumbling with protective and already loving emotions—. Porrima reappeared at Axis’s elbow, reaching past him to pluck Spiritus out of the playpen. She gave their guests a considering look, then calmly reached out and plopped their son into Nox’s arms. Nox’s grip tensed, but his arms shifted into a proper position with a speed that looked instinctive, “Hey, wait-!”

Porrima ignored Nox’s breathless squawk and Spiritus’s wary mumble, just picked up Historia and turned to face Ardyn, who had gone stiff as a board and deathly white, “Madam,” Ardyn said tensely, “I don’t think-.”

“Are you going to hurt them?” Porrima asked.

Ardyn’s jaw tightened, “ **Never** , but I don’t-.”

“Are your arms so weak you’ll drop her?”

“No, but-.”

“Are you sick?”

Ardyn shook his head but kept shying subtly back, “I-.”

Axis sighed at his wife as she exchanged Historia for Venia, then turned and fearlessly stepped into Ardyn’s space to put their boldest daughter in the arms of Niflheim’s Chancellor —and the king’s unknown relative—. Ardyn went stone still as soon as Venia was in his arms, hands cradling her like she was fragile as glass and his eyes huge. Axis bounced Historia in his arms a little as he scolded, “Porrima. Don’t force them to hold the children if they don’t want to.”

“But they do want to, and it’s good for the triplets to meet new safe people,” his wife sniffed back. Then she flitted back to the kitchen without waiting to see the fallout of her actions.

Sometimes he thought his wife trusted his judgement and choice of houseguests a little **too** much.

Axis sidled closer to Ardyn and held out an arm, “I can take her back if this really makes you uncomfortable.”

Ardyn stared down at Venia with the roundest eyes Axis had ever seen. Venia blinked up at her new handler, looked over at her dad, then looked back at Ardyn and curiously patted his cheek, grabbing at his red-violet hair in fascination a moment later. Ardyn inhaled, and Axis felt a second magic flood the room, old and powerful and **monstrously** protective. Where Nox’s was deep like the ocean, powerful but … subtle, like currents under the surface, Ardyn’s magic felt wild. It felt like the ripple of spotted fur in the jungle, the glimpse of fangs and teeth of a feral beast. Nox’s protective adoration of the little boy he was bouncing in his arms was like the pull of the tide, sweeping in and out with each breath, but Ardyn’s-. Ardyn’s was the rumble of a Coeurl’s purr as it curled around its cub, the singing edge of bloody steel, promising death to anyone that so much as looked wrong at Axis’s triplets.

Ardyn very slowly sank down onto the floor, legs crossed to form a lap for Venia to flop on, and when he looked up at Axis, his normally blue eyes were a brilliant, Coeurl gold, “They’re beautiful.” He whispered hoarsely.

Axis felt his shoulders relax as he sat down on the floor with Ardyn and let Historia clamber around on his lap. He had **not** intended to let Nox and Ardyn hold the triplets within minutes of getting in the door, but Porrima had a good instinct for people, an even better one than Axis’s, and the triplets were rapidly getting over the shyness that was typical of their age around strangers and were instead babbling at Nox and Ardyn like old friends. Axis ran his fingers through Historia’s hair and murmured, “They’re my whole world.” _I’m trusting you with the secret of their existence._

Nox joined the impromptu semi-circle of laps, gently playing tug of war with his own fingers in Spiritus’s stubborn grip, something ancient and adoring in the red tint of his eyes, “Children always are.”

Venia stood up using Ardyn as a support, reached up and gleefully tugged on the Chancellor’s hair. Instead of wincing, Ardyn laughed, and the last nervous edge he’d carried since Axis finding out his secret faded, “They seem more interested in strangers than you.”

Axis hummed, “Only because I’m right here and they saw me a week ago. That and you two aren’t ordinary strangers.” He was sure now that his kids could feel Nox’s and Ardyn’s magic, that the blood of Shields passed down from his veins was drawing them to the pair like moths to flames. Just a few months ago, Astrals, just a few **weeks** ago and that thought would have terrified him.

Now he watched them gingerly play with the triplets until dinner time and could only think of the little bag of Arra beads he kept hidden under the floorboards of the bedroom, and how nice one of them would look in each of the wayward Izunias’ hair.

After dinner and story time, after Axis had cuddled and told stories to his children until they slept while Porrima entertained the vaguely dazed looking Nox and Ardyn in the kitchen, after he had shooed the pair to the tiny guest room Axis had added on to the house not long after buying it, he went to sit with Porrima in the nursery corner of their bedroom —the house wasn’t big enough for a separate creche room, but for now that was fine—. Porrima took his right hand in both of hers and ran her fingers over the callouses, like she could feel everything he had seen since his last visit from those alone, “He’s the Chancellor of Niflheim,” she murmured.

“He’s Nox’s uncle.” Axis retorted, “He is … strange. And kind.” Axis thought of too many scars for any one man to survive, of the blue brand he’d glimpsed only once while muscle and skin knitted back together, of the fear that had been in his eyes, like his very presence would somehow harm the child in his arms, “He has not been treated well by the Mainland. Either of them.” In the dark of the nursery, Axis let himself shake from the memory of blood spreading on the pavement, the sound of the axe head coming free of a chest that should have belonged to a dead man. His wife wrapped her arms around his shoulders and he finally let himself shudder, revolted and horrified and saddened by the memory of how calm Nox and Ardyn had been before realizing he was there. How they had behaved like it was normal. Like there was nothing out of the ordinary, pulling weapons from the body of their relative, joking and cursing and patiently waiting for the wound to be unmade and death to be denied without the help of potion or elixir or phoenix down.

Axis breathed in and whispered, “They have been **wronged** , Porrima. Both of them have been so wronged.” He wanted to tell her more, wanted to tell her all of what he had seen. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t his secret to tell, and here at the bedside of his children, speaking of such things felt … wrong. Cursed.

Porrima kissed his temple and rocked him back and forth, “You trust them.”

He did. Not completely. He didn’t know if he could ever trust a Lucis Caelum completely —even when they went by the name Izunia—. His soul and the souls of his children were too vulnerable to the chains hiding in their magic for that, but … he did trust them. He trusted them more than he had trusted any non-Galahdian before, more than even some of the other Clans. He trusted them enough to let them near his family, to let them hold and play with his children. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, or how, but he did.

He trusted them.

He pressed his face to her neck, “I want to bead them. If they will let me.”

“Both of them?”

“If they agree to it.”

Porrima stroked his hair, not condemning him, just thinking about what he’d said and what he hadn’t said. Then she nodded, “They watch the world like they are only guests in it. They need family to ground them. Bring them home.”

Axis thought of an axe blade in a chest, of too many scars glimpsed beneath a lifted tunic and two minds that couldn’t seem to properly grasp time or rest or food without someone else making them remember. He thought of the eerie normalcy of watching death denied, and magic that turned a teenage soul into something ancient and **other** or exhausted and shaking by turns. He exhaled shakily, “Yes. They do.”

The next morning, he presented them each with a bead and offered to mark them as Arra. He did it separately, approaching each one alone so the other would not feel pressured in their answer. Nox stared at the bead with bright eyes and accepted with a shy smile that felt warm like the summer sun, and Axis wove the braid into Nox’s hair with Porrima as witness and told him to never take it out —he would teach him the culture later, but for now, knowing to never take the braid out was enough—. Ardyn studied the bead with a far sadder expression, and somehow Axis wasn’t surprised when he said no.

“I am still the Chancellor,” Ardyn explained without prompting, “a connection to me would put all you have built at risk. Very few know of my nephew’s existence, with him your secret would be safe. But if there is significance to your braids…” Ardyn looked at the house, like he could see through the walls to where Porrima and Nox played with the triplets, “I will not put this at risk.”

Axis had accepted that answer, but he kept the bead separated from the others, tucked away in a separate bag made of violet cloth for the day Ardyn felt it safe to accept.

Nox and Ardyn stayed for three days, playing with the triplets and listening to the Songs and Stories Axis told the children —the ones he told Nox, because these were part of his culture now too—. Ardyn trailed behind Porrima as she gardened, and Axis had never seen a man look more content than when Ardyn was wrist deep in the dirt, weeding and pruning and setting aside little clippings of sweet smelling leaves that Porrima could use for tea. On the morning of the fourth day, Axis woke up to find them gone, with a note of thanks on the table, a little pile of gil Axis knew must have come from the pair’s own meager stash, and a trio of clumsily stitched akita dog plushes that hummed _love-comfort-safety_ to the touch. The triplets adored the new toys even as Porrima chuckled over the terrible stitching and lopsided stuffing.

Axis stayed longer, he always stayed as long as he could before the need for funds drove him out into the wilds again, and when he finally did have to leave, he wasn’t surprised to run into Nox only a few days out. There was no sign of Ardyn, but Nox’s shoulders were relaxed, and when they hunted, the blindspot that covered Nox’s back felt a little more like Axis’s shape rather than a ghost’s, so he didn’t let himself worry too much.

They started traveling together more often, sharing hunts and Niflheim raids alike, and when Nox began dragging Axis to a dusty outpost called Hammerhead, Axis noticed the protective, sad gaze of the gruff elder who ran it and felt glad that there was at least one other person who kept an eye on his wayward human disaster.

At one point, completely without warning, Nox dropped off the map entirely. Axis felt himself go crazy searching for him for months before he met up with an equally worried Ardyn and a frowning Dave and they all finally thought to check Hammerhead, where the teen had apparently been helping out for the last few months without bothering to send anyone word.

If it weren’t for how drained Nox and Ardyn looked when the elder who ran the place finally let them out of his office, Axis would have **slapped** Nox for making him worry so much —he had gotten over his fear of reprisal long ago, and Nox was an idiot who deserved a good slap sometimes—.

Their routine was restored, and Axis was content with it. He ignored the growing unease in his chest, that he needed to inform the other Clans of who he had adopted. But to do that would be to expose Nox’s heritage to all of Galahd and it felt wrong to do that without Nox’s permission —without Nox understanding that it wouldn’t put him in danger—, so he held off and busied himself with lessons on Galahdian culture instead. The blindspot on Nox’s back grew a little more Axis-shaped each passing adventure, though he doubted it would ever truly come to fit him —some ghosts were too strong to fully fade—, and Axis’s lingering, subconscious fear that someday Nox would turn his magic on Axis’s Shield blood and bind him faded every time the scrawny teenager limped up to him after a successful hunt with bright eyes and a tired smile.

Nox was fourteen and Axis had known him around a year and a half when the status quo went sideways.

It wasn’t a Niflheim raid like Axis would have expected. It wasn’t an adventure with Ardyn along —who always attracted disaster even more strongly than Nox—. It wasn’t even because of bad weather or a dangerous hunt. It was just a mistake. A simple, time-consuming mistake that wasn’t even **their** mistake, but rather a misprint of the intel on the Hunt poster that led them three miles off course of their mark. By the time they realized the issue and tracked down the mark manually, by the time they had fought the herd and culled the marked members of it, by the time it was **over** and they were tired and ready to trek to the nearest Haven-.

It was dark. Not evening, not sunset, not **twilight**. It was **dark**.

In the moonlight, the battered old kukri Axis had only recently worked up the nerve to ask about —and in exchange gotten a choppy, grieving story of a daemon and a harrowing fight and blades that had no owner to return to but did not deserve to be left behind—, gleamed blue with Nox’s bristling magic as they hurried through the dark for the Haven. Axis kept his weapon in his hands. He wasn’t an idiot. They were **miles** from the nearest safe place, there was no chance they weren’t getting through the night without a fight of some kind. He just prayed that the daemons were busy elsewhere tonight. He couldn’t afford to get hurt or killed by the terrors of the night —he refused to leave Porrima and the triplets alone, even if a dark part of his heart murmured that if something did happen, Tredd and Luche and now **Ardyn** would all make sure they were cared for—.

He heard the sickening gurgle of the Scourge, the groan of rusted iron and skitter of claws and tensed, trying to pinpoint the sound as he pressed his back against Nox’s.

He felt his heart lurch in horror as he realized the sound came from **everywhere**.

They hadn’t stumbled across a lone Iron Giant or a little pack of Goblins. They’d stumbled into the middle of a **horde**.

The night glowed with the fire of two Red Giants and at least a dozen Fire Bombs and Axis’s world narrowed to the harrowing ordeal of running and dodging and slashing, trying to cut through the goblins that chased at his heels and not get pinned down long enough for the Red Giants to catch up. Nox’s magic flared, bright and sharp like ozone or bitingly cold like ice whenever the Red Giants got too close or the goblins too thick, but he was tired from their wayward Hunt, and not even a Lucis Caelum could fend off a horde with only a lone Galahdian as backup —even trained and crowned Lucis Caelums stayed safe behind their vaunted Wall for a **reason** —.

Axis saw the Fire Bomb’s light before he registered what it was, saw it shake itself vigorously like a bull about to charge, barely registered the way it left a trail of fire as it streaked across the darkness. It wasn’t aimed at him, it wasn’t even near him. Axis would have been fine.

Nox cut through another pair of goblins with his blades, and the blindspot the size of a man —a lost brother, a Shield— glowed in the rapidly closing light of fire.

Axis wasn’t sure how he got there in time. He didn’t remember running, didn’t even remember **planning** to run. All he remembered afterward was seeing the Fire Bomb start its charge and then **being there** , arms raised, sword braced, trying to deflect the Fire Bomb to the side and feeling the world shake and all sound drown beneath a high pitched ring as it instead exploded against his blade and arms and chest.

_Sky-ground-sky-ground-sky-ground-sky-._ Axis blinked up at the stars and tried to remember how to breathe, but his lungs didn’t work and there was something slick as water and sharp like copper filling his mouth and throat, and he couldn’t make his arms move no matter how his head screamed to _get-up-get-up_ because there were daemons all around and he couldn’t afford to **die here** -.

Past the ringing in his ears, Axis could hear something **scream** , high and feral. Not a daemon, but not a human either. This was something raw and animal and **draconic** that shook his teeth as Nox’s magic **exploded** all around him with a force that made the bombing of Galahd feel like a spring rain and Axis’s already thready breath faltered.

He’d felt Nox’s magic before in a dozen settings. He’d felt it rumble like thunder during a raid on a Niflheim base, steady and inevitable as mecha units and MTs alike fell to it. He’d felt it that very first time, ancient and knowing as it pressed into his soul and judged him. He’d felt it swell like a gentle tide to surround Axis’s children in love and protection, and sensed it snap with _grief-fear-memory_ right before one of Nox’s dreaded Quiet Days that made him more a ghost walking than a living being.

He’d never felt it like this.

Nox’s magic roared like a physical being, a dragon of legend and destruction, and past the swimming in his head, Axis didn’t think he was imagining the way the air bucked and punched outward like the shockwave of a hundred Niflheim bombs. The dark night sky bled bright blue, crystal shards swirling down around him like snow that screamed _fury-denial-grief-not-again-_ ** _not-this-timeNOTTHISTIME-_** and Axis barely had the time to think that _oh_ , this was the true power of a Lucis Caelum enraged when Nox was there, leaning over him and crushing a Hi-Elixir against his chest.

Axis gasped, air suddenly far easier to grasp, the thick copper taste in his throat clearing and feeling rushing back into his limbs as Nox grabbed him and hauled him tight into his arms.

In the swirling blizzard of crystal shards, like an entire galaxy of stars come to earth around them, Nox’s eyes were gleaming points of inhuman rage. Everything about Nox was inhuman. From the glowing color of fresh blood that were his eyes —where was the blue Axis was used to where was **Nox** — to the burning, shimmering heat pushing its way out of the glowing blue cracks in Nox’s skin, in the way the arms wrapped tight around his shoulders were an ashen white-grey in the light of Nox’s magic.

Trapped —protected— in the cage —shelter— of Nox’s burning arms, Axis could only watch with his heart in his throat as Nox turned those burning eyes on the daemons that remained, wavering outside his star field of magic, caution overriding their usual bloodlust.

Too late to save them. Axis could feel it in the air, the **fury** that poured across his tongue like burned spices as Nox clutched Axis to his chest and **screamed** to the sky.

Moon and stars and the clear horizon of a cloudless night disappeared as, in the space of a heartbeat, the sky clouded over and screamed right back. Out of the darkness, out of the roaring storm clouds, a figure formed. Tall as a mountain, dressed in the flowing robes of an elder and with a beard the length of a waterfall, a staff of a unicorn’s head in one building sized hand-.

Ramuh.

Fulgarian. Storykeeper, Storm-Father of Galahd.

Nox had just called down **the patron Astral of Galahd**.

Axis screamed despite himself in shock and visceral, disbelieving **terror** as one of those massive hands rushed down toward them. He twisted in Nox’s arms, trying to pull Nox down, trying to pull Nox **away** even though he knew it was futile, certain down to his bones that they were about to be crushed like insects-.

A hand that smelled like ozone and felt like old storm clouds made solid swept them up into a palm with gentleness that belied all reason. Nox’s arms tightened around him, the younger teen’s body hunching over him protectively as Nox’s magic burned _hotter-hotter-higher-stronger_ in a silent **demand** that left Axis with mud for knees even though the demand wasn’t even aimed at him.

Not at him. At **Ramuh**.

Nox was **commanding Ramuh** **with his magic**.

The great staff of the Fulgarian rose up to the clouds and lightning snapped, striking it again and again and again until it shone like the sun at noon and Ramuh **threw** his staff down toward the earth that was already distressingly far below them. So far below that Axis could barely hear the impact of the staff crashing into the ground and the screams of the remaining daemons as they were destroyed by the massive, lightning infused weapon. The light of the destruction surged up and back toward the sky and Axis squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear it, one arm blindly clutching at Nox’s burning skin as he waited helplessly for whatever came next.

The air grew quiet and a rain-filled breeze rippled over his frame that might have been natural or might have been from Ramuh **moving** through the sky but Axis didn’t dare open his eyes to check, just kept clinging to Nox and praying that his friend wouldn’t turn to ash in his arms from the heat and magical pressure pouring out of him. The air shifted and Axis sensed them going down, and when he finally dared crack open his eyes, the Storm-Father’s fingers were unfolding to rest against the rim of a Haven. The massive palm tilted and Axis yelped as they slid gently off of the hand made of living storms and onto cold, rain-soaked stone. Nox was shaking now, like a leaf in hard winds, and when Axis dared to look up at the Fulgarian’s face, it was creased with a sort of … parental concern.

Eyes that glowed with storm light and the color of Loyalty focused on Axis and Axis felt terribly, terribly small, **_“Safeguard him,”_** rumbled a deep voice both in Axis’s mind yet not, and though Ramuh’s lips never moved, he knew that was who’s voice he was listening to, **_“for his body is too fragile for the power he holds and his heart too wounded to remain steady against the loss of another Favored.”_**

Axis opened his mouth, shut it, shifting his arms to wrap around Nox’s back protectively. He didn’t … he couldn’t process all this. He had known Nox was strong, he had known Nox had suffered, but … strong enough to call down an Astral? Favored by the Storm-Father enough that he would speak to a human after so many centuries of slumber and silence? “Who is he?” Axis whispered, so soft his words were swallowed by the patter of the rain against stone.

Gleaming purple eyes glanced at Nox, then refocused on Axis with an ancient intensity that staggered the mind, that outstripped even Nox’s gaze during his most quiet, eerie moments, **_“He is what he has always been and will always remain. He walks now with no Title, and no destiny to guide his way, but we still Remember him for who he was and still is. Our Beloved Chosen.”_** Ramuh straightened up from the Haven, and without words or sign, Axis knew the brief —impossible— conversation was over. The Storm-Father drifting up into his dark clouds, body fading away into trails of golden light the higher he got until he disappeared entirely and the black thunderclouds broke apart and drifted away to reveal the moon and stars once more.

Axis stared at the spot where Ramuh had disappeared —the Storm-Father, the patron of Galahd, the Astral that had just **spoken to Axis** — until he became aware of fingers digging into his skin and a sobbing whisper repeating endlessly in the crook of his shoulder, “Don’t leave. Don’t leave. You can’t leave me, please, please not again. Don’t leave. I can’t do this again, I’m the one who’s supposed to leave first not you, please, **please**.”

Axis looked down. In the dim light of the Haven’s runes and the moon, Nox’s skin looked normal again. There were no glowing cracks, there was no sickly ash or furnace fever. There was just pale skin and shaking limbs that were now far too cold and a hitching, sobbing plea mumbled over and over, begging for him to stay. Axis shifted, forcing his own shaking hands to move Nox out of his protective hunch and instead into a more relaxed position on Axis’s lap. It was an awkward fit, but trying to move Nox to the side just made the pleading worse and the grip on Axis’s arms painful, like Nox was afraid Axis would disappear the moment he let go.

Though considering everything that had just happened, maybe that wasn’t an unfounded fear so much as a memory of the past come back to haunt.

Axis finished shifting Nox around and put his chin on the younger teen’s head, holding Nox until the sobbing stopped and overwrought muscles relaxed, “I’m not going anywhere.” Axis whispered hoarsely, “We’re alright. I’m staying right here.”

The shaking got worse the more Nox relaxed and Axis longed for the camping supplies he’d abandoned during the battle because a blanket would have been very helpful, but the only ones they still had were tucked in Nox’s armiger. Nox shuddered, breathed desperately, “You’ll stay?”

Axis ran his fingers through Nox’s hair, breathless but stubborn. He couldn’t afford to break down in shock, and Nox was in no state of mind to be asked questions —shouted at, because what the **pyre** had just happened and since when had his raggedy, wayward Izunia been the Astral’s **Beloved Chosen** , whatever that meant—, “I’ll stay.” He promised and meant it down to his bones. He cared about Nox, he had **adopted** Nox, shown Nox his secret little family. He had been watching Nox’s back for over a year now, and Nox had just saved his life —had just **summoned an Astral** and almost burned himself alive with magic just to save one refugee, an unwanted and illegitimate child of Mainlander nobility at that—.

Axis breathed in, breathed out and pressed his face to the top of Nox’s head, “I’m not going to leave you alone. I’m not going to leave you behind.”

The last of Nox’s tension flooded out of his frame, the painful grip on Axis’s arms relaxed and Nox shifted to bury his face against Axis’s throat. The shaking was so bad now that Axis could feel it vibrating through his own body, and where Nox had earlier been burning up, now he felt cold as death. Axis needed a blanket. He needed a **tent**. But the only supplies they had were in Nox’s armiger, and Nox didn’t seem aware enough to summon them of his own volition. “Nox,” he murmured as soothingly as he could, “Nox, we need blankets. You’re freezing. Can you get out some blankets? Or a tent? Please?”

Nox didn’t seem to hear him, “Stay. Stay with me. Don’t go. Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, but you’re freezing and this Haven is soaked, we need blankets and a tent. Please Nox, just open your armiger and get them out, then you can sleep, alright? I’m right here. I’ll stay right here.”

“…Armiger? You … need?”

Axis grit his teeth, he was coming down from an adrenaline high and about to crash himself, but Nox was rapidly sliding toward unconsciousness and if he did then there went Axis’s chance at getting them shelter and keeping Nox from getting hypothermia on top of whatever nasty side-effects using that much magic had, “Yes. I need armiger.”

“You want … armiger? My armiger? You…”

“ **Yes** , Nox, I do.”

A sluggish movement, a twitch of clammy fingers as one hand slid to rest over Axis’s chest and the other wrapped around his wrist. Nox rubbed his nose against against the hollow of Axis’s throat like he was a big, exhausted cat, but when he spoke, there was an echo to it, a ripple of voices that weren’t his lingering on the edge of Axis’s hearing, giving weight to the single word, “ **Mine**?”

Something in Axis’s blood jolted, like recognition and longing and fear all in one, but he didn’t have **time** to puzzle it out, to listen to the warning crawling up his spine, because if Nox passed out and Axis crashed from the adrenaline and his —near death by daemon— healed injury then they might **both** catch hypothermia and die. Besides, the answer on his tongue was clearcut enough, concise and honest in every sense or interpretation he could think of, “Yes. Yours.”

Nox hummed and the sound vibrated in Axis’s bones. His fingertips pressed into the pulse point of Axis’s wrist and the touch nipped like static, “Shield of my body,” Nox whispered and Axis felt his blood go still, “rampart of my resolve.” The tingling built, spread up his arm, through his veins toward his heart, “Strongest of my chosen brothers.”

The tingling reached his heart and Axis inhaled raggedly as he felt **magic** seep into his skin, into his blood and bones and heart, “Nox, what are you-,”

The magic sank deeper, brushing up against his soul like it hadn’t since that first day they had locked eyes and Nox had weighed Axis’s soul —weighed the Amicitia blood Axis had successfully hidden all his life until that moment—. Realization dawned and fear followed on its heels, locking Axis in place even as his tears slipped free and he **begged** , “Nox, **wait** , **please** -!”

Nox didn’t seem to hear him, didn’t even seem fully conscious or aware of what he was **doing** —because he would never do what he was about to do if he was fully aware of himself, even now, even with tears burning hot, terrified tracks down his cheeks, Axis knew that—, “Never doubt your place at my side.”

That magic, exhausted and shaking but still deep and vast and powerful, wrapped around his soul, sinking into it like roots into the earth and Axis squeezed his eyes shut with a ragged noise, bracing for pain —for chains, for the **cage** and oh he prayed this could be undone once Nox was aware and in control himself again, for both their sakes he prayed because this would be agony for Axis, but it would **break** Nox who so loved his few friends and cherished freedom as much as air—. Nox inhaled, exhaled against Axis’s skin as he finished, “Second Shield of my life, I name you Axis Arra, Buckler of my left hand.”

The roots **reached** , deep and inescapable, wrapping tighter and tighter-.

Eased. Clicked. Settled into place as soft and painless and integral as the beads in Axis’s hair. Nox sighed, and his last words were slurred from exhaustion, “Everything … I have … I share … with … you…” Nox sagged in Axis’s arms, unconscious and oblivious to the tears running down Axis’s face or the shuddering running down his spine. Axis tilted his face to the sky and breathed, ragged and open mouthed, struggling to process, to **understand**.

This didn’t feel like chains. This didn’t feel like being caged to another’s side. There was a heat in his veins, faint and buzzing like the charge in the air before a storm, but it didn’t feel like it was going to tear him apart and drive him to his knees if he disobeyed or ran away.

Ran away.

_Run._

Axis scrambled to his feet, barely pausing long enough to stretch Nox out unharmed on the Haven, then he twisted around and **ran**. Off the side of the Haven and into the dark, not caring about daemons, not caring about the way his legs were already shaky from exhaustion and fear. He ran across the open ground, all the way to the tree line a good fifty yards away.

And then he stopped.

Nothing was making him stop. There was no burning in his bones, no agony, no extra voice in his head screaming to turn around and return to a master. There was just aching silence, and the whisper of the wind in the trees, and his own thoughts bouncing chaotically from fear to anger to worry over Nox to worry over himself. If he wanted to, he could keep going. He could keep running. He could leave Nox behind and never look back and **nothing would stop him**.

Inside his soul, magic hummed patiently. Waiting for his decision. Not forcing him to make one choice or the other.

_This doesn’t feel like chains._

It just felt like … Nox. Nox who bumbled around without caring for his own health. Nox who played so gently and lovingly with the triplets and made them plush toys with lumpy stuffing and clumsy stitching. Nox who never made him come along or stay behind, but accepted his choices with a faint smile.

Nox who had just saved him. Who had called down one of the Astrals themselves and nearly burned alive from his own power just to save Axis’s life.

Axis turned around and walked on stiff, shaking legs back to the Haven. Nox was out cold on the wet stone, shivering in his sleep, deep bags of exhaustion under his eyes, lips tight with discomfort, one hand groping sluggishly across the stone as if looking for something. Looking for Axis, but not summoning him, not calling him back with the magic humming softly against his soul. Axis sank onto the Haven next to Nox’s head, buried his face in his hands with a sob, “Why?” He whispered, “Why did you do this?” There had to be a reason, there **had** to be. He knew Nox, he had fought at his side for over a year, had trusted him enough to adopt him and let him meet Axis’s family. Why had he **done this** , even when more than halfway unconscious from magic exhaustion?

_“You want … armiger? My armiger?”_

Axis stilled at the memory. He remembered that. He remembered that question. At the time he’d meant that he wanted Nox to access it and pull out blankets, he’d assumed Nox was just too tired to repeat the entire question back to him. But if he took the question **literally** , as Nox might have while so exhausted…

_“Everything I have, I share with you.”_

Axis lowered his hands and stared at them. Listened to the new, humming magic in his soul. He’d said he wanted armiger. He said, in a way, to Nox’s sluggish, exhausted brain, that he wanted Nox’s armiger. Axis buried his head in his hands again and started crying, not from fear, but from hysteria. Nox hadn’t been thinking straight, he’d been barely cognizant, but he’d gotten the idea that Axis wanted an armiger.

So he had **given** **Axis armiger**.

Scrubbing the tears from his face for the moment, Axis counted slowly to ten and lowered his hands again. This time he kept them there in his lap and focused. It was still night, and cold, and wet from the rain even though the sky had cleared away once Ramuh faded. They still **needed** things. Tent, blanket, preferably fuel and matches for a fire. He could —he would— panic later, he could —and would— demand answers from Nox later. For now he had to make sure the two of them survived. He had no idea how to access armiger, but as he stared at his hands and envisioned pulling blankets out of thin air like Nox could…

Something felt like it knew how to access it for him. Not the magic waiting patiently for his command, but something else. Something all him that reached out and made his hands twitch and crystal shards flare clumsily to life and dump what felt like a **mountain** of blankets on his own head. Axis crawled out from under the blanket mound —how many did Nox have in his armiger, seriously— and felt hysterical laughter push at his teeth again. _I don’t know how to do this. But Amicitias have been tied to Lucis Caelum magic for years. I don’t know it…_

_But my blood does._

And that didn’t really make sense to him, and he knew it would never make sense to anyone else if he said it aloud, but in some primal sort of way it **did** make sense, and really he was too dazed and wrung out to care right now. He just reached out again and after a few tries managed to drag free a tent and pegs. He rigged the tent around Nox’s unmoving form, lifted Nox up enough to clumsily cram a few of the blankets underneath him as a shield from the cold stone, then piled the rest of them on top of Nox and him. Shoving down the screaming in his head, the part of him that had been afraid of Lucis Caelums and Amicitias and magic for so long, Axis pulled Nox into his arms. He tucked the teen’s head under his chin and waited out the shaking until warmth crept back into pale limbs and Axis drifted off beneath the many blanket layers, too tired to stay awake and continue fearing what had just happened.

He didn’t wake up until afternoon, hot and smothered under the blankets and the tent and the sun beating down through the canvas. He crawled out of the tent and scrounged for wood to make a cooking fire, ignoring the itch of magic beneath his skin, ignoring that Nox no doubt already had wood and matches waiting in armiger, because he wasn’t ready to acknowledge he had magic —that he had **used** magic—.

Nox slept through the entire day and night and then half of the one that followed. By the time Nox crawled blearily out of the tent, hair a ratty mess and eyes partially glazed, Axis had had a lot of time to think. To cycle through anger and terror and confusion and tentative hope and back again so many times he didn’t know if he could muster his anger anymore. He wordlessly shoved a plate of food in Nox’s hands, didn’t protest when Nox leaned against him, reluctant to part from Axis. The food slowly disappeared, and when it was gone Nox blinked several times and truly woke up for the first time since that horrible night. He looked around, then flinched and whirled on Axis, reaching for him with worry in his eyes, “Axis, are you-!”

“I’m not hurt,” Axis replied tightly. Nox stopped and stared at him. He looked confused. Like he could hear how upset Axis was with him but didn’t know why. Axis forced himself to keep meeting Nox’s eyes, “Do you … remember what happened after you … after you summoned Ramuh?”

Nox started to shake his head, paused, the frowned, “You … you asked me for something? It’s … everything is fuzzy. Did you ask me for something?”

Axis worked his jaw, “You were shaking, you were freezing. I asked you- I asked you to get a blanket out of armiger, or a tent. I wasn’t picky.”

Nox glanced over at the tent, “Oh. Okay?”

Okay. _Okay,_ he said, “Do you remember what you did **instead** of that?”

“No, I don’t remember-.” Nox stilled. Looked at Axis. That eerie age crept back into his eyes and the magic humming placidly beneath Axis’s skin jolted a little, like it had been dozing and now woke up and it was easily the most terrifying sensation of Axis’s life aside from getting magic in the first place. The part of him that had had nightmares about his Amicitia blood for years cringed, bracing for the chains that he knew Nox would never consciously put on Axis’s soul but might have by accident, and though Axis didn’t feel chained he couldn’t be **sure** -. Instead, the humming settled again and Nox’s eyes cleared, then brightened, “I gave you magic. I named you Shield.”

“You did,” Axis managed to keep his voice level, but Nox’s forehead crinkled in confusion anyway.

“You’re upset,” he said softly, and instead of horror or dismissal there was just an innocent, open bafflement. Like he saw no reason for Axis to be upset.

Axis’s fists clenched and he realized that he **did** still have the energy to be angry —to be terrified—, “I’m **not** an Amicitia, Nox. I’m not-. I don’t-.”

Nox’s expression shifted rapidly through emotions, then went blank, “Oh. You … you don’t want to be my Shield. But…” the confusion crept back, “but the bond was successful.”

Axis’s breath stuttered, “Does that mean you can’t undo it?”

Nox’s expression didn’t change, but the magic under Axis’s skin **flinched** like he’d just struck it and he didn’t think that was **his** hurt he was vaguely feeling, “I can undo it. If that’s- if that’s what you really want.”

_Yes,_ Axis almost said, then stopped, because the living energy under his skin wasn’t humming anymore but cringing, curling around his soul in a way that wasn’t restricting so much as pleading, and Axis got the visceral impression that there was more to saying “yes” than just “I don’t want magic”. There was a whisper, an instinct, that if he said “yes” he’d be asking Nox to do a lot more than just undo what he had done while semi-conscious. Axis struggled with what to say, struggled with how to explain his deep, consuming fear of being dragged away from his family and forced to be an Amicitia. At first that fear had only been in the form of his father, a physical separation and removal to Insomnia. But after facing down Nox’s magic that first time, it had become a fear of spiritual separation too. A fear that he wouldn’t be able to take care of his family, that his will could be taken away at any moment, that he wouldn’t even be a **Galahdian** anymore-.

But Nox wasn’t like that. He **wasn’t**. And if he saw nothing wrong with this … bond, then Axis needed to know why. He just didn’t know how to ask, where to start, he didn’t know… “I don’t know what a Shield **is** , Nox. I know Amicitias have been bound to Lucis Caelums as their Shields for generations, I know it’s … expected. But I’m not an Amicitia. I’m an **Arra**. I-.” He swallowed, then whispered, “I’m afraid.”

Nox stared at him, then slowly folded in on himself with a look of ache and melancholy that hurt, “Oh. Oh **Axis**.” That echo came back, a hundred voices all faint and whispering and **grieving** , like he had hurt each and every one of them with his words, **“Do you really think I would chain you?”** Axis flinched, Nox swallowed and looked away. When he spoke again, his voice was meek and tired and alone, not lined with a hundred other whispers, “Amicitias are not bound. They are welcomed. Each and every one has the right to walk away, and if they are incompatible, they- they’re just incompatible. It happens sometimes. I’m not-. I would **never** chain you. You are your own person and I would never change that. I … I can take the magic away, if that’s what you truly want but I-.” Nox bit his lip until Axis was afraid it would bleed, then blurted, “Please. Keep it. You can-. I can leave if you want. You can never see me again if that’s want you desire. Say the word and I’ll go away and never come back, never speak to you again, but **please** , keep the magic. Use it to- use it to protect yourself, and your family.”

Axis blinked, caught flatfooted by the implication that Nox could go away and never return but his magic would still answer to Axis, “What-,”

Nox’s words sped up, his hands clutching his knees until they were white-knuckled, “I almost lost you, Axis. My blindspot almost got you **killed** and I can’t- I **can’t** lose another. I can’t watch another one of you leave me behind without knowing there’s some way to keep you safe. If you have my magic, you can defend yourself better, you can store weapons in armiger and never be unarmed, t-there’s elemancy you can use against things resistant to blades, you can store potions in there so you aren’t short of medical supplies, you can-. Anything you want to keep you safe, anything at all. It will be **yours** and I’ll never bother you again just please, **please** -.” Nox sagged and buried his face in his hands, and the last of Axis’s bristling anger and lingering terror faded away.

Axis hesitated, then scooted across the stone to tentatively wrap an arm around Nox, who shuddered under his touch like he expected to be struck instead of held. Axis let that settle, let the sensation of the cringing, pleading magic under his skin sink in, then said, “I think … I think you need to explain what Shields are. If they aren’t bound … then what are they?” Because Nox seemed to know a lot of things even though he hadn’t been raised as royalty, there were things he’d said during his Quiet Days, or things he’d mentioned offhand during their friendship that he shouldn’t have been able to know but did. Axis had never questioned where the knowledge came from, not when Nox’s magic was so powerful and heavy and made Nox look and feel so old in his soul.

Nox shivered, then whispered, “Shield’s aren’t servants. They aren’t … they aren’t slaves or weapons. They-, they’re part of the Retinue. An integral part. There may not always be a Heart or a Sword, and Hands can come and go, but the Shield is always there. **Always**.”

“And … what is the Retinue?”

Nox raised his head and looked out toward the horizon with old, pained eyes, “The Retinue are, and have **always** been…” Axis felt his world slow down in its spin, and when Nox tentatively met his gaze, Axis saw a painful, bleeding honesty there, a longing that he knew intimately from his own mirror, from the eyes of a hundred other Galahdians, “My brothers.”

The world stopped entirely.

Nox looked away, traced the air with his gaze like he could see the shapes of his ghosts long lost, “Siblings are rare for Lucis Caelums. Births are hard, and magic makes it harder. Two children is the highest one can reasonably hope for, and four is a miracle only heard of a few times in all of history. But … we aren’t meant to be alone. Things go … **wrong** when we’re alone. Things get twisted up in our heads and hearts and we **need** family. We need siblings. We need sisters. We need brothers. So we search for them instead. We **find** them, or they find us, and they become part of the Retinue. They ground us, and stay with us. They…” His voice broke, with memory and longing and pain, and when he continued, Axis could tell he was remembering someone, someone who had likely told him what he was telling Axis now, “a king cannot lead by standing still. A king pushes onward always, accepting the consequences and never looking back. But … we can accept nothing without first accepting ourselves. And when we stand still … they stand by us, and lend us a hand. As our friends … and as our brothers. Ever-. Ever at our sides.”

Nox’s shoulders slumped, exhausted already just by his words, “There is no such thing as an unwilling Retinue. There **isn’t**. There can be disagreements, and fights, sometimes so deep they … leave. Move away and live elsewhere. But they never **stop** being the Retinue, they never stop being brothers, and if we call we know they will return, if only for a short time. We give them a piece of our soul, and in return, we gain brothers or sisters of our heart for as long as both of us live. Amicitias have been part of that cycle since the beginning. Since the Mystic first found a boy with only a beast for family and named him friend, but in the end it is always a **choice**. The bond **cannot** form if one of them is truly unwilling, if the Shield or the Hand or the Heart do not truly care about the one offering them magic. There have been Shields that were not Amicitias, there have been Amicitias that were something other than Shields. Being Amicitia doesn’t make you a Shield.”

Nox glanced at Axis’s face, then looked away, “Being my **brother** does. But only if- only if you want it. You can still keep the magic and never see me again, or if you- if you **really** , truly want me to, I can take it away. It’s … it’s up to you.”

Axis stayed still, but inside he was reeling. That was … that was nothing like what he’d thought magic was supposed to be. That was nothing like the few stories Galahdians had of Shields and kings. The Amicitias were always Shields, he’d never heard of an Amicitia that wasn’t a Shield, that didn’t take the oath and receive magic, and he’d assumed it was because of tradition. A requirement, a price of being born into the “noble” family of Amicitia. Instead Nox was describing a brotherhood. A partnership that lasted generations, as steady and strong as the Ulrics and Ostiums, or the unbreakable ties between the Lazarus, Furia, and Arra. Nox wasn’t describing slavery. He was describing **adoption**. Sibling adoption, the search to find and claim more family than blood and birth complications allowed. A **need** for siblings that Axis, having been raised most of his life with Tredd and Luche, understood all too well —where would he have been as a child without Tredd as his courage and voice, or Luche as his sense and strategy, or either of them without Axis as their caution and keen gaze—.

Something in Axis loosened and his hands shook as he realized that Nox’s magic, when it had settled in his soul, had never been a threat of chains, it had been the magic equivalent of **beading** him. Of giving to Axis what Axis had given first that morning he offered Nox an Arra bead. Nox had thought Axis needed access to his magic, so he had **adopted** him, without hesitation or doubt.

And Axis had been about to ask him to take that away. Had been about to unknowingly spit on Nox’s feelings and throw them back in his face. Like sheering off a newly formed braid and throwing it at Nox’s feet, and Nox had taken it to mean Axis no longer wanted him around. Nox had begged for him to keep the magic even if he wanted Nox gone, because it was more than power, it was a piece of Nox. A way to keep safe the man he saw as … another brother.

“We’re brothers.” Axis whispered, awed and flatfooted by the realization, “You … think of me as a brother.”

Nox’s shoulders hunched, bracing for rejection, “Yes.”

Axis swallowed down the nausea that threatened to rise. He’d almost broken that, his fear of his own blood, his fear of what Nox **could** do to him without really accepting that Nox would **never** do that to him had almost ripped out that bond by the roots —as ridiculous as being afraid of the Clan warriors just because they carried weapons, as if being armed meant they might strike family, as if love was so easily corrupted by the mere presence of a weapon or ability to cause injury—. He’d all but threatened to sheer Nox’s Arra braid off with his bare hands and if he hadn’t asked first, he never would have known until it was **too late** -.

He grabbed Nox and pulled him close, snatched him to his chest and buried his face in Nox’s hair, “I’m so sorry,” he whispered raggedly, “I didn’t know. I had no **idea-**. I thought-. I thought it was…” But that was stupid wasn’t it? Even if magic could chain him, this wasn’t just any magic. This was **Nox**. He could no more be afraid of Nox’s magic than he could be of the teen himself. He trusted Nox with his back during battle, had **seen** how far Nox would go to save his life. A little magic buzzing under his skin was nothing to fear in that light.

Nox tentatively hugged Axis back, “You … you don’t want me to leave?”

“ **No**. Astrals, Nox, I’m so **sorry** I ever implied-.” Axis took a breath, “There aren’t that many stories about the Lucis Caelums and their Shields. Just that Amicitias are always at the side of their king. I assumed… I assumed it could be forced. Your magic is so strong, I was … I was afraid.” Axis laughed bitterly, “I shouldn’t have been. I shouldn’t have forgotten who that magic came from. I trust you enough to let you near my family, to put my bead in your hair. I shouldn’t have been afraid of your magic near my soul.”

Nox slowly relaxed into Axis’s grip, and the magic under Axis’s skin sang soft and heartbreaking with _relief-relief-happiness-relief_ that wasn’t his own, “I shouldn’t have done it without you knowing what you were getting into. I’m sorry.”

“You were almost entirely unconscious and I was asking you for something to do with your armiger,” Axis retorted, “I’m the one who walked into that. You aren’t to blame.”

Nox’s voice was ragged as he murmured into Axis’s shoulder, “Thank you.” Axis just held him tighter in response.

They stayed on the Haven for the rest of the day. Nox was still exhausted, and Axis was too emotionally drained to want to push onward. Instead they stretched out side by side on the Haven and just … dozed. Sometimes they’d wake up and talk, but Nox would doze off again and Axis would follow suit in the sunshine. At one point, Axis worked up the courage to ask the question that had been bothering him for a while, more so now that Nox had given him magic —and that thought still made him jolt uneasily, years of being afraid of that side of his heritage couldn’t be shaken so quickly, for all he could push it down moments later—, “I’ve never heard,” Axis murmured slowly, “of a king taking a second Shield.” Though he supposed that since neither of Nox’s Shields had been Amicitias —not acknowledged ones anyway—, Nox might be an exception…

Nox’s breathing hitched, and Axis thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then, “It’s rare. Shields are stubborn, but so are we. Usually if a battle goes badly enough that the Shield dies … their king falls soon after. Sometimes Shields die of old age before their king, but that’s rare, and the age gaps are usually close enough that there’s no point in taking a second. Even if there was … it’s hard … to let someone in like that a second time. To trust someone to watch your back that thoroughly, to keep you in check and set your head straight when you get all twisted up inside. There’s only been … five. Five times in history that I know of where a Lucis Caelum took on a second Shield after the death of their first, and two of them weren’t crowned rulers, they were the younger siblings of the ruling monarch.”

Five times in … Axis took a moment to scrounge up King Regis’s titles. One hundred and thirteenth, and that was just the number of Lucis Caelums who had sat on the throne. He didn’t study Mainland Lucian history enough to know the details, but he knew there had been siblings or even cousins throughout the royal history, and they were never added to the count. He wondered briefly how Nox knew of them —how he knew any of this, considering he was an Izunia more than a Lucis Caelum and he and his uncle had not been raised in Insomnia or the royal courts—. Then he remembered Nox’s Quiet Days. The age and fragility.

_“Magic remembers everything it has seen or been used for. Magic never forgets,”_ Nox had told him once in the aftermath of a Quiet Day, _“and if you go too deeply inside … you remember it too. And then you can never forget either.”_

He bit back the question that had been on his tongue in exchange for another one, albeit one potentially just as bad, “Can you … tell me about him? About them?” _About the Shield who’s shadow I stand in, about the Retinue you whisper for sometimes in your sleep without knowing you do?_

Nox sighed and the sound was so sad Axis reached over to grip Nox’s bicep in silent apology. Nox’s other hand came up to curl around Axis’s wrist in silent forgiveness, “He was … strong. Not just physically -though Astrals knew he was built like a **tank** -, but … emotionally. He didn’t mother anyone, he didn’t pull his punches, but he wasn’t cruel about it … usually. He kept me moving forward even when I didn’t want to.”

“He sounds tough.”

“He was. But he was also … funny. He smiled easily and he laughed loud. He loved little kids, loved babysitting them and making them smile. He flirted with just about any girl he met so long as they weren’t obviously taken or out of his league, but he didn’t really … do anything to them. He just liked flirting. Maybe some kissing. Nothing more. Honorable. A gentleman, though he loved pretending to be a bad boy instead, wandering around shirtless at every chance to show off his tats.” Nox laughed and the sound was nostalgic and raw, “He had the **worst** taste in books too. ‘Historic period romances’ he called them. Iggy just called them ‘dime store bodice-rippers’. They’d get into huge arguments over it when I was a kid. He kept bringing them over to read while I did my homework and Iggy thought just being near them was a ‘bad influence’.”

Axis laughed quietly and Nox hummed a fond note, “He was always kicking me around during training. Used the biggest greatsword he could get his hands on, swung it around like it was a toy. I could…” Nox’s smile faded, “I could always trust him to have my back. To make me keep pushing forward even when I hesitated.”

Axis nodded. He had seen Nox’s blind spot for a long time, the one shaped like a person, the one Axis was too small to properly fill out even after all this time, “And … the others?”

Nox’s smile crept back, even though it was tinged with sadness, “Iggy was my Hand. The … I’d known him the longest, so he felt like the eldest even though he wasn’t. He was … calm. I don’t remember my mom, but Iggy was … kinda what I always thought one should be. Not that he would have appreciated me telling him that. He kept my head on straight, taught me to sit and think things through,” a rueful look at Axis, “though that lesson didn’t stick nearly as well as he wanted it to.” They shared a laugh and Nox shifted to press his shoulder against Axis’s, “He was the best cook I’ve ever known. He told me once that his favorite thing was seeing people smile over a dish well prepared.” Nox’s face twisted briefly in memory and there was a swell of _guilt-pain-guilt_ that made Axis’s stomach drop, but Nox didn’t explain what thought had caused his pain.

He shook himself and then continued, “My Heart … he was my sunshine. He … chose me. Chose to be my friend when he didn’t have to. He was the bravest of all of us, hands down.”

“A fearless friend?” Axis asked tentatively, thinking of Tredd’s recklessness and Nyx’s cheerful lack of self-preservation.

He was surprised when Nox snorted, “ **Pyre** no. Prom was scared of **everything**. Scared of strangers, scared of heights, terrified of the dark and small places-, some of the places we had to go through together, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. But … he never did. He kept pushing through and **laughing** about it. The other two … they kept my head on straight and my butt in gear, but Prom gave us **hope**. No situation was too bad for him to make a joke, no discomfort too big for him to weather. He was my best friend, he … he was our light, and when he was gone-.” Nox’s breath stuttered and his magic **ached** , “When he was gone, we … fell apart.”

Nox closed his eyes in memory, and Axis tentatively shifted to wrap an arm around Nox’s shoulders, “Thank you,” he whispered after a long pause, “for telling me about them.”

Nox swallowed hard and leaned into Axis’s touch, “I miss them, Axis. I miss my brothers **so much**. I miss them so badly that sometimes I can’t breathe.”

Axis thought of Nox’s Quiet Days. The moments where his magic burned too hot and his mind went somewhere far, far away. He thought of Nox’s scars, the way he was better at self-care than Ardyn, but how that was a terribly low bar to have. He thought of the way Nox had been so scared that Axis would ask for him to take the Shield bond away. Of how Nox sometimes sang to the wilds and looked like he ached when nothing sang back. He thought of the Fulgarian lowering them onto the Haven and saying **_“Safeguard him, for his body is too fragile for the power he holds and his heart too wounded to remain steady against the loss of another Favored.”_**

He thought about Galahd. Of his mother and his cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. He thought of the Elders, and the friends he’d had in the other Clans. Of Tredd’s father who taught them all how to hunt and Luche’s cranky aunt who made the most beautiful tapestries. He thought of Tredd and Luche and what would happen if he ever lost them too. Then he pulled Nox closer and murmured, “I know, Nox. I know.”

Eventually, Nox dozed off again, and Axis resigned himself to being a pillow for his friend —his Lucis Caelum, his adopted brother, his **king** —. His own thoughts flitted this way and that, puzzling over the things he’d learned, the things he’d seen.

Their dynamic changed after that. Not much really, not as much as he’d expected, but it was still a shift. They became … steadier. More set and firm. They drifted apart less and less, though there were times still when they parted so Nox could visit Cid and Cindy in Hammerhead while Axis went home to Porrima and his kids. Other times Axis dragged Nox —and usually Ardyn too— home to his wife so she could feed them, because they really were far too thin. Still others he followed Nox to Hammerhead after a day of fighting the Nifs, aching from combat but satisfied somewhere deep in his gut at fighting back.

During one of the times they parted, Axis was struck with an idea, a … want, a **need** , almost. It was one he’d been ignoring for a while now, the itch of discomfort that he carried something so important to Nox under his skin yet his only outward sign of loyalty in return was the Arra braid in Nox’s hair. Of course, the braid was hardly a small thing in Galahdian culture, a mark of family and protection and history. But Nox was still new to their culture, uneducated. He didn’t fully grasp what it meant yet, and sometimes it made Axis pace with the want to do more.

Nox had saved his life. Had summoned an **Astral** to defend him. Had marked him as his second Shield even though there was still such a wound in his heart left behind by his first Retinue. Axis was like most Arra, not very good with words when they could instead perform deeds, but what deed could he do as thanks that he hadn’t already? He had been fighting alongside Nox well before the magic incident, and he had already welcomed Nox —and his uncle— into Axis’s family.

An idea came to him while he was turning in a Hunt at a Kenny Crow. There were pictures of past Hunters who had completed exceptional Hunts hanging on the back wall, and he’d never really paid attention to them before. But there was a delay in his pay, with the owner having to fetch the extra gil from the back, and Axis was passing the time by idly examining the pictures of Hunters smiling over their prize kills when his gaze caught and he choked on his drink.

The owner came out just as Axis recovered his breath, followed Axis’s stunned gaze to the picture in question, and smiled, “Aye, that’s a big one isn’t it? Bet you didn’t even know that Coeurls could get that big, did you?” Axis made a strangled noise, because yes the dead Coeurl in photo was **massive** but that hadn’t been what nearly choked him. The owner counted out gil absently as he continued, “I inherited this job from my father, but back then I was just learning the ropes, working the counter like every other hire. That crew of young men blew in, looking for a Hunt that would net them a lot of gil in one go, and they ended up taking the Hunt for that Coeurl.” The man shook his head in amazement at the memory, but Axis wasn’t really listening anymore.

He was staring at a younger version of his blood father.

He had no idea how or when or **why** King Regis —who would have been a prince back then, surely— had gotten so far out into Lucis and decided to take on Hunts for gil, but … there was no mistaking the people in the picture. In the center was a young man who could have been Nox if he was several years older, with hair much shorter and a **mustache** of all things. And on his right … was Clarus Amicitia. In the photo he looked vaguely upset, face marred by a scowl despite his prince’s bright grin, and Axis wondered if it had something to do with why the Shield of the Prince was in the picture completely shirtless —he’d just bet there was a story to that, not that he would ever be able to know—.All of the —very few— photos and appearances Axis had ever seen of Clarus Amicitia had him wearing a uniform with sleeves that covered his arms and shoulders, but in this picture, there was none, and even in the faded colors of the years-old picture, the eagle tattoo of the Amicitia line stood out stark against his pale skintone.

…Axis had forgotten about the tattoo. He knew of it, of course, there was a reason no tattoo parlor in Lucis —not even Galahd— would ink an eagle tattoo larger than the palm of someone’s hand. The eagle was the symbol of House Amicitia, of the Shields of the kings and all the history that implied. Some people said they got it as soon as they were of age, while others said they only got them once they had taken the oath to their king and become a Shield. Either way, there was no denying that the sprawling tattoo symbolized House Amicitia and their loyalty to their kings —their brothers and sisters in heart, according to Nox—.

Axis took his gil and left hurriedly, not daring to ask any questions about the photo or the people in it. But the image of his blood father standing at Prince Regis’s side, those Undaunted feathers twining over his chest and upper arms … it stayed with him. It poked at him, at his thoughts and the discontent in his blood. He thought about it for weeks, brooding and torn between being revolted by his own budding idea and clinging to it. He didn’t **need** to do anything like what he was thinking. Nox had never once asked for Axis to wear a mark, and never would ask him. Axis’s company, his little Arra bead, was all the mark Nox needed.

Which was why Axis made his choice. Because it was **his** choice to make, not a tradition or an obligation or a duty, but a choice that he was free to decide on.

He approached Ardyn one evening, after Nox had already dozed off in his sleeping bag, “On the mainlands,” Axis started cautiously, “many Houses have … crests. Animals or flowers.”

Ardyn’s hands stilled on the blood red blade he was polishing by firelight. When he looked up, his eyes glittered more like eerie gold than sky blue, “The noble ones, yes.”

Axis glanced from Ardyn to Nox, then murmured, “Does … did the Izunia have such a symbol?”

Ardyn paused, tilted his head in a way that was almost predatory, and even though Axis had no fear of the man anymore, the too-sharp expression on his face in the twisting light of the fire still made his skin crawl on instinct, “…No. Not an official crest as such. I’m afraid we were always … too small for such a distinction.” Axis swallowed his disappointment, started to nod and pull away when Ardyn caught his forearm, “However…”

Ardyn smiled, and the expression was all teeth and the mischief of the Fae Folk, the kind of smile told of in the Old Stories about the Times Unwound and the Places Forgotten, a smile that knew too many secrets and found them all morbidly amusing, “When I was a just a boy, our family were often compared to the great dragons. Even to the great Draconian himself.”

Axis stilled, settled on his heels at Ardyn’s side, “The great dragons?”

“Your people likely knew them under another name. I’m afraid they’re extinct now, unless some still lurk in the wild, untouched corners of the world where men cannot reach. They were almost gone when I was a boy, the changing environments of the world a far more lethal enemy then any weapon or petty tool of men to a species that were so slow to reproduce and so long in aging. But the adults…” Ardyn’s smile turned fond and his gaze nostalgic, “I saw one once, when I was about Nox’s age. It flew high above my head, yet it’s shadow darkened the land for what felt like miles. I looked up as it disappeared into the mountain range, and even from afar I could see its great scales shining like a thousand colors in the sunlight. **Never** have I seen a creature more beautiful or mighty. Not even Zu come close.”

His hand released Axis’s forearm and he went back to polishing his sword as he murmured, “I always thought being compared to them was the greatest of compliments. They were rare and few, but they were strong and protective, fierce and unyielding in defense of their territory and their hoard.” Ardyn chuckled, then cast another gold-tinted glance at Axis, “Does that help you?”

Axis nodded very slowly, his idea solidifying into an image. It sounded like Ardyn was describing one of the Sky Lords, the sons of the Draconian and guardians of the Storm-Father’s unclouded skies before they had all died out —except not completely, not if Ardyn had seen one in his lifetime—, “…Yes. Thank you.”

It took him a month to track down a member of Clan Khara that had a mastery in traditional Galahdian inking, but there was no chance he would risk going to a Mainlander’s tattoo shop for something like this. The Khara he managed to track down was an old master, a survivor of the Burning who had lost both legs at the knee in the flight and its aftermath. But her eyes were still keen and knowing when he respectfully asked if she would be willing to mark him with a specific pattern and place. She listened to his request, eyebrows rising to her hairline, and when he had finished, she said, “You’re asking for a lot of pain in your life, boy. Is it going to be worth it to you?”

Axis thought of Nox, of the Fulgarian coming down from the sky to save them and telling Axis that, **_“He is what he has always been and will always remain. He walks now with no Title, and no destiny to guide his way, but we still Remember him for who he was and still is. Our Beloved Chosen.”_**

He thought of the outline of a ghost he would never fill and magic that meant brotherhood rather than chains.

“I’m sure.”

The Elder leaned forward to look deep into his eyes, and whatever she saw there, when she sat back, there was something akin to approval in her eyes, “I will do it, but you will earn it first. I will give you a list. Bring me all the ingredients on the list, and I will give you your mark and ask for no gil in return.”

“Thank you, Elder.”

“It is rare anyone comes to me for something this size, rarer still an Arra comes to make a promise in blood and ink. Bring me the ingredients, and I will make your promise last a lifetime and beyond.”

He got the ingredients, here and there in between his Hunts and watching Nox’s back. When he had all the ingredients, he stripped to the waist and lay down on her table, and as she sketched his promise onto his back and arms, she warned, “This will hurt.”

“I can take it.”

A snort, but no denial or skepticism. Just the warning press of her hand on his back and then pain that lasted for **hours**.

The next time he met Nox, his back, chest, and upper arms were bandaged, and he waved off Nox’s concern with a grunt and a promise that he wasn’t injured that Nox barely accepted. The time after that, the bandages were off, and Axis said nothing as they settled down on the Haven to camp for the night. In the light of their fire and the stars above their heads, Axis carefully took off his shirt, and pointedly didn’t look when Nox stopped breathing. Magic coiled under his skin, stiff with disbelief and wonder, and Axis didn’t flinch from the hand that ran gingerly down his spine, “Axis?”

“I am not an Amicitia,” Axis whispered to the shadows in front of him, “I am no eagle with soft feathers to shelter you.” Axis turned his head just enough to see Nox staring at the new tattoo that sprawled over his back, shoulders, chest, and biceps like a shawl of dragon scales. He had chosen not to get the animal itself, because no one still living —save Ardyn— knew what the Sky Lords had actually looked like. But their scales were still remembered, sharp and pointed as diamonds, with scales of many meanings and Colors all woven into one. The colored scales draped from the base of his neck, down over his shoulders to his mid back, twining in the rough shape of wings over his biceps and chest, with one long twisting curl of them following the line of his spine like the impression of a tail.

He had been teaching Nox the Stories and Songs of Galahd when he could, but he didn’t think Nox understood the meaning of the scales’ Colors. Not yet. He knew the basic meanings, but not how they combined. The promise written out in the predominant armiger blue, with artful, deliberately small patterns of blood red, rich purple, and moonless black all spread out like multicolored stars in a blue sky that faded out to jade green down the twisting spine tail. _I will Protect,_ the scales declared, _in War I will Protect, in my Loyalty I am Fearless, and for my protected I am Watchful always._

Nox’s breath stuttered with unshed tears anyway, and Axis thought that even if Nox didn’t fully understand, he understood **enough**. “You didn’t have to do this.”

Axis turned to face Nox and affectionately tugged on the Arra braid in Nox’s hair, “I know.” _That’s why I did it._

Nox’s smile was wondering and awed for the rest of the night, even after Axis shrugged his shirt back on, hiding all but the outermost edges of his promise from the prying eyes of the world.

The summer of Nox’s fifteenth year, during one of their few times apart so that Nox could visit Hammerhead while Axis returned to his wife and children —and discuss how, exactly, he was finally going to break the news to the Clans that he had adopted a Lucis Caelum, and how to tell Nox about it first so he wouldn’t panic—, Porrima answered the battered landline phone in their house and **froze** at the muffled shouting on the other end, “Baby cousin.” Porrima said into the phone with a frosty tone that made Axis sit up, “Don’t take that tone with me.” A pause and she glanced at Axis with narrowed eyes of confusion, “What in the world has happened that you would take that tone with **Axis**?”

A frown and she passed the phone to him, “It’s Tredd and Luche, they’re on speaker on their end. They sound **furious** with you.”

Axis frowned at the phone, wondering what he could have done lately to earn their ire —this couldn’t be because he’d missed their latest Kingsglaive bar hopping spree, they knew he had higher priorities than that sometimes—. He raised it to his ear, but not too close in case someone started shouting, “Yeah?”

“ **Axis of Clan Arra** ,” snarled Luche into the line while Tredd swore and called Axis names in the background, “is there anything you’ve been wanting to **tell us**?”

Axis stared at the wall in genuine alarm, because that didn’t sound like Luche being fussy over something minor like missing a reunion. Luche sounded genuinely **enraged** in a way he hadn’t gotten since the Burning, “I … can’t think of anything?”

Luche took a deep breath over the line and Tredd went icy silent. Then Luche growled, “So. Are you saying you **didn’t** adopt someone recently? Blue eyes, about fifteen years old, related to the **Chancellor of Niflheim** and **the King of Lucis**?”

_Ifrit’s pyre. How do they know._ Axis felt his grip on the phone turn white-knuckled, “ **Nox**. Is he okay? What happened?”

Tredd shouted over the speaker, “So you **did** adopt him! You adopted him and you didn’t **warn us**! You piece of-!”

Luche cut in over Tredd’s cursing, “What **happened** is the Crown Prince got attacked by a daemon on his birthday trip to the Quay and King Regis’s **fifteen year old kid with an Arra braid** swooped in and saved him. And then passed out from warping all the way back to Hammerhead with the kid to get him away from the daemon. Where the king then found him and **brought him to the Citadel** and put us Glaives on guard duty.” Axis’s world went cold, his blood felt like it was frozen and he reached out mentally to clutch at the magic bond in his soul to make sure it was still there, still alive, as Luche continued, “ **Nyx** was the one to tell us that the new princeling had an Arra braid, and when we asked him about it he gave us **your** name.”

“Is he alright?”

“That’s all you have to say? You kept a Chief’s Child adoption from the Clans-!”

Axis was on his feet, he wasn’t sure when, and the table was still shaking from his fist slamming into it, “ **Luche**. Is. Nox. Okay?”

A surprised silence, then a frosty, “He’s alive and he’s not injured. He’s half starved and skittish as a spiracorn, and his **Chancellor Uncle** is with him, but he hasn’t been harmed. The king’s falling all over himself to keep the kid willingly in the Citadel.”

Axis leaned heavily against the table, something icy wrapping around his throat, “The king knows?” Nox was terrified of very few things, but his own father —or more specifically, the thought of meeting him— was right near the top of that list. Axis could understand that terror intimately, and just thinking about how Nox must feel right now made him sick to his stomach.

“Yeah he knows! It’s why he put us on guard duty!”

Axis found his feet again, mind already racing to figure out how fast it would take him to get to Insomnia, “I’m coming to the Citadel. I’ll be there in … five days. You need to get me in to see him.”

“Wha-? Did you not hear us?” Tredd yelled, “You **hid** a Chief’s Child adoption from us! Why should we do squat for you right now?”

Axis gripped the edge of the table so hard he thought it was going to break in his hand, “Tredd of Clan Furia and Luche of Clan Lazarus, if you keep me from my **Chief** , I will **shun you**.” He took a breath in the stunned silence and softened, “Look. I’m sorry. I messed up, I know that. I had my reasons. I’ll explain later when I get there, but first I need to get in to see Nox. I … please, guys. He needs me. My Chief needs me.”

The silence stretched for an agonizingly long time, then Luche grunted, “…Fine. But you will explain yourself to us and then you’re going to explain it to the rest of the Clans. We got caught completely flat-footed here, Axis. We had no clue what to brace for when the king brought this kid home. Nyx was caught between helping a fellow Clan and obeying her oaths and if that meeting hadn’t worked out the way it did-.” Luche cut off with a harsh breath and Axis’s stomach twisted. Nox had met his father and Axis hadn’t been there. Nox had been taken to the Citadel and the Kingsglaive, the Clans, had not had any warning of the potential conflict of oaths —the oaths to help the other Clan children in need were sacred, but so were the Oaths Of the Blade, even to an outsider king—. That was his fault. He should have swallowed his nerves and told the Clans over a year ago, but he hadn’t and now there would be consequences.

But he’d worry about that later.

Right now he had to get to Nox, “Thank you. Both of you. I’ll see you in a few days.”

Axis hung up before they could say anything else, then turned to his wife, who was watching with sad, understanding eyes. She’d figured it out. “I have to go,” he whispered.

Porrima came around the table to kiss him, long and slow and understanding before pulling away, “I know.” She turned away and made for the fridge, “I’ll give you some food to put in armiger. Ramuh knows they’ll both need something comforting and familiar.”

Axis watched her, his beautiful, fearless wife who accepted him and all his mistakes. His flaws and his brotherhood to a wayward Lucis Caelum and Niflheim’s Chancellor. “It’s likely,” he whispered, “that I will encounter the king.” _Nox knew what I was the moment we met, it is likely that King Regis will be the same. It is likely he’ll_ ** _know_** _what blood is in my veins. He and his Shield might try to take me away from you._

Porrima turned back to him, several dishes of home cooked food in her arms, and there was fire in her eyes, “Nox needs you.” She retorted, “And he **knows** you.” _Nox won’t let the king or his Shield chain you down or take you away from me. He is Clan, he is your brother, and he will defend you just like you defend him._

Fear still prickled at his spine, but his shoulders relaxed. It was one thing to have that kind of faith himself, it was another, more comforting thing to hear it —to hear the acceptance, the trust, the courage— in his wife’s voice too, “He does.” Axis agreed as he tucked the dishes away in armiger. He held out his arms and she slotted into them in a tight embrace. Axis buried his face in her hair and breathed in her scent.

He had never stepped foot in the Citadel before. Never dared go near it, barely dared enter Insomnia and only when Tredd and Luche insisted. Now he was walking right into the heart of the dragon’s den. The place where his blood father lived and worked and the Lucian king might find him and see the Shield blood in his veins. He was terrified.

**_“Safeguard him,”_** rumbled the Fulgarian’s voice in his memory, **_“for his body is too fragile for the power he holds and his heart too wounded to remain steady against the loss of another Favored.”_**

_“It is rare anyone comes to me for something this size, rarer still an Arra comes to make a promise in blood and ink. Bring me the ingredients, and I will make your promise last a lifetime and beyond.”_

**__ ** _“The Retinue are, and have_ **_always_ ** _been … my brothers.”_

Axis pulled away with one last deep breath, turned to go find his children and kiss them and hold them like he always did before he went out on a trip. Mentally, he clung to the magic in his bones that had once terrified him, but now served as an anchor just like his family, to the dragon scales inked into his skin. Axis was a many things, an Arra, a husband, a father, a **Shield**. A buckler to safeguard Nox’s back against all threats. Even threats of the heart. Nox was his brother in bead and magic and choice and promise inked in the Colors of Galahd.

And no Galahdian ever left family to face their fears alone.

He had said he would be there in five days, and it took begging a ride from Dave —not much begging, as soon as he said “Nox needs me” Dave had been willing to push his truck to the speed limit— and several close calls of running for the nearest Haven well after dark, but he made it. Partially sleep deprived and skin buzzing from nerves and worry, but he was there in Little Galahd exactly five days after getting the call. Tredd, Luche, Nyx, and Libertus met him there, all glaring at him for the secret he’d kept too long, but willing to help him reach his Chief. Nyx and Libertus kept watch in the hallway as Tredd and Luche led Axis to the suite where Nox and his uncle were being kept. They followed him in as he pushed open the door with a pounding heart.

Nox and his uncle were huddled on the couch together when he burst in, and there was the briefest flair of _alarm-surprise-fear_ at the sudden intrusion before Nox saw it was Axis and the tension rushed out of him in favor of surprise, “ **Axis**?”

Axis crossed the distance in what felt like a blink, like a warp without magic, and pulled Nox off the couch and into his arms. Nox froze for a moment, then returned the embrace just as tightly, his magic pushing against Axis’s soul in _relief-surprise-gratitude-alarm_ , “What are you- Axis what are you doing here?”

Still holding tight to Nox, Axis replied, “Luche and Tredd called me about what happened. I came as soon as I could.”

Nox pulled away just enough to get a good look at Axis’s face, “I … I’m glad you’re here, but what about…” His voice trailed off, but there was a flair of _concern-secrets_ and Axis swallowed against the lump of unease that had been stuck in his throat the last five days.

Axis reached out and gently tugged on Nox’s Arra braid instead of admitting he was still scared. He kept his gaze steady as he whispered, “I’m your Buckler. There is nothing on Eos that could stop me from coming here.”

Nox’s lips twitched up faintly into a smile, and he shifted one hand to rest against the scales curled over Axis’s bicep, “Axis…” His voice faltered and for a moment Axis thought he could see the ghosts of his old Retinue in the reflection of his eyes. The hand on his bicep squeezed, and magic curled protectively —possessively— around his soul, “Thank you.”

Axis gave one last firm tug on Nox’s braid and let the feel of Nox’s magic curling around him shore up the cracks in his courage, “Anytime, Brother.”


End file.
